1] Taxonomical monographs of new faunas, marine and freshwater, ranging from Triassic to Recent and globally based. Areas of particular interest are South America, China, Korea, Indo-Pacific, Australasia, Arctic, Antarctica; often DSDP and ODP based.
2] Biostratigraphical studies in shallow water, marine and freshwater, Jurassic to Cainozoic worldwide and Cainozoic in the deep sea.
3] Palaeoenvironmental reconstruction using ostracod faunas back to the Devonian. Reconstructing depth, salinity, temperature and energy levels. Using in-house developed statistics to separate allochthonous from authochthonous components and recently the % of filter feeding ostracods to determine past oxygen levels. The application of this to sequence stratigraphy.
4] Evolutionary studies of ostracods isolated on the summits of guyots and seamounts in the Indo-Pacific, in an isolated brackish Neogene lake in the Upper Amazon basin, and in deep sea Cainozoic and shallow Mesozoic sequences both marine and freshwater. Evolution on isolated islands such as Pitcairn and Easter Islands.
5] Migrationary events, such as those through the Tethys and, after its closure, via other routes between the Atlantic and Arctic, Atlantic and Indo-Pacific and Atlantic and Mediterranean. Electrophoretic analysis to interpret relatively recent migration patterns.
6] Palaeoceanographical studies of the Cainozoic using Ostracoda from DSDP/ODP. The detection of palaeooceanic events by changes in deep sea ostracod faunas.
7] Biophysical studies of the ostracod carapace. Measuring its resistance to impact and compressional loading and modulus of elasticity and relating these to carapace infrastructure, architecture, thickness and chemistry.
8] Shell chemistry of ostracod carapaces, especially Ca, Mg and Sr ratios are calculated to reconstruct palaeotemperatures and palaeosalinity as part of our palaeoclimatic and palaeoceaanographical studies. Oxygen isotope analyses to same end, both Quaternary marine and Quaternary lake beds from Ethiopia, Morocco and Patagonia.
9] Ecological studies designed principally to provide data to better interpret the palaeoecology of fossil faunas. These studies are in both marine and freshwater environments. Other studies, of stomach contents of planktonic, oceanic ostracods are designs to improve our understanding of complex food webs.
10] Genetic studies on Ostracoda are designed to compare and correlate taxonomy at the cellular and molecular levels with traditional alpha taxonomy. Karyotyping, isoenzyme analysis and PCR studies of ostracod DNA are designed to determine evolutionary relationships, genetic distance, inter and intra specific relationships, and speciation patterns.
11] Zoogeographical provinciality of the Ostracoda determined and used, with transfer functions, to recreate palaeoclimatic conditions back through Plio-Pleistocene. Applications to Global Warming.