About the Project
Project Background
Understanding changes in biodiversity is a key research field in ecology and conservation biology. Globally, biodiversity continues to decline, largely as a result of human activities (Tittensor et al. 2014). Two of the most important pressures on biodiversity in the coming decades will be land-use and climate change (Thomas et al. 2004; Newbold et al. 2015). Understanding and predicting how these pressures, separately and in combination, will influence biodiversity at a global scale is a pressing issue for conservation biology.
Considering how the ecological traits of species influence their responses to environmental change is valuable for at least two reasons. First, there are insufficient data to investigate how most species will respond to environmental changes. If species’ responses are related to their ecological traits, it is possible to generalize observed patterns across a greater number of species than would otherwise be possible (Newbold et al. 2013). Second, the ecological traits of species often determine their contribution toward key ecosystem functions (Hooper et al. 2005). Understanding whether environmental changes are likely to lead to the loss of species from ecological communities non-randomly with respect to traits can therefore provide insights into likely effects of those environmental changes on ecosystem functioning. In previous work focusing just on bird species in tropical forests, I have shown that the traits that are disproportionately lost as a result of human land-use change are those most likely to be associated with important ecosystem functions (Newbold et al. 2013, 2014).
How both climate and land-use change might alter the trait structure of ecological communities globally remains largely unexplored. This project will tackle this question for the first time at global scales.
The project will involve statistical modelling of the response of biodiversity to land use, using an existing database (Hudson et al. 2017), taking into account how the traits of species influence their responses. Technically, the work will include a combination of spatial analysis (using Geographical Information Systems) and statistical analysis (using R).
Skills Required
The successful student is expected to have a background that includes modules in ecology or conservation, and ideally some experience of statistics in R (or other software). Experience of geographical information systems would be useful, but is not essential.
Supervision and Training
The successful student will be supervised by Tim Newbold and at least one other person at UCL. UCL has an excellent program of training courses for PhD students, including general courses in research management, communication, career development, basic statistics and computer programming, achieving policy impact, and many other things; and also courses more specific to ecology and conservation.
Apply
For information on how to apply, please visit my website: https://timnewbold.github.io/opportunities.html.
References
Hooper, D.U., et al. (2005). Ecol. Monogr., 75, 3–35
Hudson, L.N., Newbold, T., et al. (2017). Ecol. Evol., 7, 145–188
Newbold, T., et al. (2015). Nature, 520, 45–50
Newbold, T., et al. (2013). Proc. R. Soc. London Ser. B Biol. Sci., 280, 20122131
Newbold, T., et al. (2014). Glob. Ecol. Biogeogr., 23, 1073–1084
Thomas, C.D., et al. (2004). Nature, 427, 145–148
Tittensor, D.P., et al. (2014). Science, 346, 241–244
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