Explore our current postgraduate research degree and PhD opportunities.
Unsustainable hunting is one of the most pervasive threats to forest wildlife [1], which together with forest disturbance have large impacts on biodiversity and leads to defaunation. Defaunation has far-reaching ecological, social, economic and gendered implications for rural communities, where wild meat contributes to food security and livelihoods [2]. The consequences on biodiversity and rural communities intensify with increased pressure from land conversion. Whilst land conversion is detectable from satellite imagery, cryptic activities such as hunting, and resource extraction have gone under-reported. Recent developments in acoustic sensors [3] provide us an opportunity to address this data gap. This project will take an interdisciplinary approach to evaluating the socio–ecological sustainability of hunting practices within tropical forests in Belize, Central America. The region has seen rapid deforestation, with increased isolation of forest areas. The project will add to the global knowledge on the deployment strategies for acoustic sensors to collect ground-level data on hunting pressures in forest areas; will explore the socio-ecological systems where land-use change is influencing hunting activities and consequential environmental impacts; and establish community perspectives of sustainable hunting, providing novel approaches to governance and regularity frameworks of hunting activities. For full project details visit the Inspire project page.
The diamondback moth (DBM), Plutella xylostella, is an agricultural pest with worldwide impact on brassica crops (>$5 billion in annual damages). Its unique glucosinolate sulfatase (GSS) enzymes allow it to specialize on cruciferous host plants by evading their glucosinolate/myrosinase defence system1. In preliminary studies, we established that herbivory by DBM caterpillars is controlled both by environmental light and their internal daily timekeeping systems. Moreover, the expression of DBM GSS genes exhibits circadian rhythmicity. This project aims to elucidate abiotic and biological determinants of DBM herbivory of its host plants. It will complement ongoing research focused on circadian control of herbivory in the DBM caterpillar by concentrating on environmentally-controlled defence mechanisms in cruciferous plants (Brassica rapa and Arabidopsis thaliana). The following Specific Objectives will be pursued: SO1: Identify how host plant glucosinolate production and herbivory by DBM are affected by (a) glucosinolate biosynthesis and daily timekeeping in the host plant, (b) daily environmental cycles in light and temperature. The latter will simulate representative light/temperature cycles for the UK and explicitly explore the predicted impact of light pollution and global warming. SO2: Identify changes in plant and DBM expression profiles that are closely associated with changes in herbivory across different environmental contexts. For full project details visit the Inspire project page.
Many wildlife species have been pushed into Earth’s few remaining areas still unmodified by human activities, at the edge of existence. Advances in the capabilities of Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), remotely operated camera and acoustic technologies, and big-data analysis by machine learning, now offer opportunities to survey otherwise inaccessible areas and develop robust datasets for populations of conservation concern, which are often cryptic species. This technology promises – but has not yet delivered on its potential – to count animals too rare for foot patrols and too cryptic for satellite imagery, to follow individual animals without disturbing them, and to quantify forest biodiversity and hunting frequency from soundscapes – all complex problems insoluble by direct observation. Your project will develop and test methodologies for evaluating this promise. You will trial newly developed equipment and collect field data relevant to conservation management of snow leopards in Kazakhstan (IUCN Red Listed as Vulnerable), and/or scimitar-horned oryx (Regionally Extinct), addax (Critically Endangered) and slender-horned gazelles (Endangered) in Tunisia. By the end of this project, you will have added to global knowledge on value and limits of conservation technology, to projections for population trajectories of endangered mammals, and to understanding of causes of population declines. For full project details visit the Inspire project page.
Averting catastrophic climate change will require transformational societal change. A key aspect of such change will be in sectors such as agriculture and energy systems. However, there is emerging evidence ((Dunnett et al. 2022) that some options for achieving our climate ambitions risk undermining globally agreed targets relating to biodiversity and ecosystem services. It is therefore essential that future energy and agricultural systems are designed to address both the climate and ecological crisis in parallel. Doing so will require ensuring that land used to meet future energy and food demand does not impact our imperative to maintain and even increase natural ecosystems such as forests. The aim of this project is to develop and empirically test spatial models that assess the degree to which transformational change of landscapes to mitigate climate change can also achieve the protection of natural systems on which human wellbeing depends. Analysis will be conducted at both regional scale to address policy relevant questions for the UK government, and at global scale to examine compatibility between global targets relating to climate and biodiversity. Questions will be examined through the lens of international treaties (e.g UN SDGs) and their regional implementation strategies (e.g. UK 25 Year Environment Plan). For full project details visit the Inspire project page.
Elasmobranchs (sharks and rays) are important components of marine ecosystems worldwide but are poorly studied compared to many teleost species. Effects of climate change on elasmobranchs are still poorly understand, but their low fecundity and relatively long embryonic development stage could make elasmobranchs particularly vulnerable to some climate change effects. Ocean acidification (OA) has been shown to increase mortality and induce developmental defects in early juvenile teleosts, e.g. (Stiasny et al., 2019), but comparative data on elasmobranchs are lacking as laboratory experiments are relatively difficult. Elasmobranch physiology, reproductive style, blood chemistry and respiratory anatomy all differ markedly from teleosts, so that experimental results from teleosts cannot be assumed to apply. Limited studies to date give contrasting views on the sensitivity of shark developmental physiology to OA, e.g. (Green and Jutfelt, 2014), but very little work has been done, and we have essentially no experimental basis to predict how resilient early development of elasmobranchs is to climate change effects. This project therefore aims to explore the long-term effects of OA and potentially other climate drivers on the early development of sharks, in particular the development of gills and the skeletal structures, which Stiasny et al. (2019) showed to be affected in cod. For full project details visit the Inspire project page.
Climate change provides a major challenge for plants as they cope with increases in abiotic stresses such as high or low temperature and drought. These conditions will negatively affect responses to biotic stresses caused by insect herbivores and pathogens, and contribute to the ongoing problem of providing sufficient food for an increasing World population (1). Temperature stress and drought can result in the production of reactive oxygen species including singlet oxygen, which signals to the rest of the plant that it is in a stressful environment. Seedling development is a particularly sensitive time during the plant life cycle and seedling damage is a major cause of crop loss. We have shown that singlet oxygen production in seedlings has a similar transcriptional signature to heat stress (2) and we hypothesise that singlet oxygen signalling from the chloroplast sends an SOS signal to the seedling that permits acclimation to environmental stresses. In this project we will test this hypothesis by examining the ability of Arabidopsis mutants (e.g. 3) compromised in SOS to withstand different stress regimes including heat and drought. We will then use our Arabidopsis findings to investigate the SOS response in important crop species including wheat and rice. For full project details visit the Inspire project page.
Ecosystem function weakening due to reduction in top predator numbers is a first order global problem. In the oceans anthropogenic activities adversely affect marine mammals, with 25% of species being threatened. Determining their spatiotemporal distribution and abundance is central to understanding ecosystem health. The aim of this studentship is to combine Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) and satellite-linked tracking (biotelemetry) to determine marine mammal abundance and distribution. Determining a reliable distribution of animals from these two contrasting techniques will require careful comparison, data integration and insight, as PAM techniques require identification of individual species from their call types, while in biotelemetry specific animals are tracked Marine autonomous vehicles are effective in sensing and understanding the oceans and can be equipped with PAM devices that can record a large frequency bandwidth facilitating a high-fidelity and complete record of the marine soundscape. Interrogating the vast datasets that are recorded by fleets of autonomous data is a current challenge. The student will, firstly, apply and further develop machine-learning techniques to identify individual species. Secondly, the student will leverage large marine mammal tracking datasets, as well as abundance and distribution predictions, to compare and integrate tracking, distribution and abundance data with PAM data. For full project details visit the Inspire project page.
Earth’s oceans are warming and losing dissolved oxygen due to human activity. Experiments on modern animals show that the combined impacts of seawater oxygen and temperature are a substantial environmental threat to animal ecosystems. Ocean warming and deoxygenation (anoxic) events are common in the geologic record, and these ancient climate perturbations were often linked to marine extinctions. But many questions remain unanswered. What were the magnitudes and rates of warming and the ocean oxygenation responses? What proportion of marine species went extinct? Were some taxonomic or functional groups more likely to survive than others? Most ancient climate events have been studied qualitatively by investigating extinction at the global scale to link biodiversity in the fossil record to oceanographic change. You will combine computer models of ancient oceans/climate and ecosystems with quantitative palaeobiological methods to make predictions about the impacts of ancient climate change and then test our understanding against the fossil record. You will study key intervals of Earth history where past climate change is suggested to have impacted marine ecosystems (e.g. Cretaceous oceanic anoxic events) to produce some of the first direct and statistically robust tests of how ocean warming and deoxygenation have impacted animal ecosystems through Earth’s history. For full project details visit the Inspire project page.
Global warming has already reached 1°C above pre-industrial levels because of greenhouse gas emissions. The polar regions are losing ice mass, the ocean is heating up and rainfall patterns are shifting, reducing seawater mixing and oxygenation (ventilation) and limiting oxygen supply to marine ecosystems. To help frame predictions of Earth’s future we need datasets much longer than those possible by direct observation. You will study past intervals of CO2-induced global warmth from the Plio-Pleistocene and Miocene. We will focus on regions such as the Mediterranean and Arabian seas because geological records show that they are early warning sites for ocean hypoxia. In the past, bottom waters in these semi-enclosed basins were regularly stripped of oxygen when astronomically driven warming strengthened the African and South Asian monsoons, spawning green, vegetated landscapes, reactivating ancient dry riverbeds and cutting off dust supply to the oceans. These changes drove seawater anoxia by capping the Mediterranean with buoyant freshwaters, preventing overturning and by supercharging wind-driven upwelling and the biological pump in the Arabian Sea. However, the response of these climate interconnections to CO2-driven global warmth is poorly understood. You will tackle this problem by studying past warm intervals in these natural laboratories. For full project details visit the Inspire project page.
System resilience is the ability to buffer shocks, such as extreme weather events, war, economic disruption, or political regime shifts (1). However, rather than view shocks as purely negative phenomena, understanding how systems respond to them can provide valuable insights that can help enhance resilience to more severe shocks in the future (e.g. climate change). Over recent times the UK fishing industry has experienced a range of systemic shocks that have included changes in regulatory regime and trading arrangements (Brexit), modified supply and demand (COVID-19) (2), and threats to profitability and livelihoods (fuel crisis exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, 3). From a systems perspective, these interacting events can have both negative and positive consequence for the marine fisheries resource operating through trade-offs and synergies. Declines in activity can have negative impacts on the fishers over the short term while allowing stocks an opportunity to recover to provide longer-term benefits. This project will use novel interdisciplinary methods that combine remote sensing, machine learning, and economic modelling to quantify the response of the fishing industry and fish stocks to systemic shocks. This will facilitate greater understanding of how resources may be more sustainably managed in the face of future threats. For full project details visit the Inspire project page.