Philip Ashmole

Nelson Philip Ashmole (born 11 January 1934 in Amersham, Buckinghamshire ), commonly known as Philip Ashmole, is a British zoologist and conservationist. His main research field focused on the avifauna of islands, including Saint Helena, Ascension Island, Tenerife, the Azores, and Kiritimati. Other interests include insects and spiders, of which Ashmole discovered and described some new taxa.

In 2002, Philip and wife and his long time collaborator Myrtle Ashmole were presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Pacific Seabird Group, and in 2015 they received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the RSPB Nature of Scotland Awards. Ashmole was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) "or Services to Nature" in the King's 2026 New Year Honours.

Career In 1957, Ashmole graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in zoology from Brasenose College, University of Oxford. In the same year, he became a research student at the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology (EGI) and accompanied the scientists Bernard and Sally Stonehouse, and the ornithologist Doug Dorward on a two-year expedition of the British Ornithologists' Union to Ascension Island in the South Atlantic. Here, Ashmole studied the breeding and moult cycles of terns, about which he wrote in his Oxford doctoral thesis, The Biology of Certain Terns: With Special Reference to Black Noddy Anous tenuirostris and the Wideawake Sterna fuscata on Ascension Island. In 1960, Ashmole married Myrtle Jane Goodacre, the Ascension night heron and the Ascension crake. of the Pacific Seabird Group, and in 2015, Philip and Myrtle Ashmole received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the RSPB Nature of Scotland Awards.

Myrtle Ashmole died on 27 April 2025 and is remembered as "A champion of Nature and a Starter of Things".

Ashmole's halo Ashmole's work on Ascension Island led him to propose a hypothesis about how large concentrations of seabirds might be able to deplete forage fish resources in the vicinity of their breeding colonies, creating a zone of reduced food availability that would influence foraging and breeding success and behaviour. This zone was later termed "Ashmole's halo" by other researchers. The concept has since been widely used in ecological studies of seabirds, and found to apply in varying degrees to many different species and ecological regions.

Selected works P. Ashmole, M. Ashmole: Comparative Feeding Ecology of Sea Birds of a Tropical Oceanic Island. Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, 1967 M. Ashmole, P. Ashmole: Natural history excursions in Tenerife: A guide to the countryside, plants and animals. Kidston Mill Press, 1989. P. Ashmole, M. Ashmole: St. Helena and Ascension Island: a natural history. Anthony Nelson, Oswestry, 2000. M. Ashmole, P. Ashmole: The Carrifran Wildwood Story: Ecological Restoration from the Grass Roots, Borders Forest Trust, 2009. P. Ashmole, M. Ashmole: Natural History of Tenerife, Whittles Publishing, Dunbeath, 2016. P. Ashmole, M. Ashmole (editors): A Journey in Landscape Restoration: Carrifran Wildwood and Beyond , 2020