Profile
Gavin Broad
CV
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About Me:
I am a lover of bugs, birds, brambles, all of nature. I am luck enough to work at the Natural History Museum in London.
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I live in Kent, but I grew up near Liverpool, near the sea. A life-long interest in nature led to a career in wasps. Outside of work I still look at wasps, but also birds, flowers, and anything else. In the distant past I used to write things and with friends wrote a show for the Edinburgh Fringe. Now I try and interest my daughter in the natural world, which she is very interested in eating.
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Most of my work is carried out here in Britain, where I collect insects and work on insects that have been in the museum for many years. We extract DNA from some of these insects, so we can discover more about how they have evolved. Sometimes I collect caterpillars or other young insects and then hope that a wasp will be inside! These wasps parasitise other insects and I am trying to find out more about how they live. Sometimes I am lucky and I have trips to South America, North America, South Africa, China, etc. I work a lot on the wasps of Vietnam, but I have never been there!
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My Interview
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How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
waspy, big hair
What did you want to be after you left school?
A taxonomist
Were you ever in trouble at school?
Only for not doing my homework!
Who is your favourite singer or band?
Cocteau Twins
What's your favourite food?
lobster
If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
To visit Australia; to live by the sea; to be proud of my daughter
Tell us a joke.
A man went into a record shop complaining, 'this isn't at all what I thought I was buying, I wanted a recording of wasp noises. But listen to this!' He plays the record and indeed, there are no scratching noises, just a humming sound. The record shop owner say, 'But sir, that is the correct record, you're listening to the bee side...'
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