Laura-Li is an ENVISION DTP NERC funded PhD student at Lancaster Environment Centre, supervised by Prof Nick Graham, Dr Casey Benkwitt, Dr Gareth Williams (Bangor University), and Dr Simon Brandl (University of Texas). After her engineering degree in life sciences (AgroParisTech), Laura-Li went on to complete an MSc in Ecology and Evolution at the Ecole Normale Supérieure d’Ulm, France. During her studies, Laura-Li had the opportunity to work for the National Park of American Samoa, which sparked her interest for the complexity of coral reef ecosystems. She later went on to focus on fish genetics and ecology at the CRIOBE lab in Perpignan, France, where she investigated connectivity patterns in the shanny Lipophrys pholis, and the effect of anemone species on recruitment dynamics in the clownfish Amphiprion percula. Laura-Li’s current research focuses on understanding how fish communities differ across changing environmental conditions. In particular, she looks at how cryptobenthic fishes’ abundance, diversity, trophic role and recruitment dynamics vary according to nutrient input, drawing on both community ecology and population genetics.