The Macroecology of Changing Marine Ecosystems

The marine environment covers most of our planet, and is vital for food provision, climate regulation, and biodiversity. Research in my group (shefmeme.org) aims to understand how marine biodiversity is distributed within and across regions, and how stresses such as overexploitation and climate change are likely to affect marine ecosystems and the services we derive from them. We work at a variety of scales from global assessments to more detailed regional studies, and interact with national and international stakeholders to ensure that the results of our research are presented in a format that is useful for a policy and other audiences. A common theme to all our work is the use of global databases of the occurrences, relationships, and biological characteristics of marine species, which offer us unprecedented opportunities to conduct statistical and macroecological analysis in collaboration with leading international data providers. We aim to both understand the fundamental dynamics of marine diversity in space and time, as well as how human activities, from fishing to renewable energy installations and designation of marine protected areas, will affect these large-scale patterns. We provide expert training in state-of-the-art computational techniques to interact with, manipulate, visualise, and analyse these databases, using existing and our own open source tools.

Science Graduate School
As a PhD student in one of the science departments at the University of Sheffield, you’ll be part of the Science Graduate School. You’ll get access to training opportunities designed to support your career development by helping you gain professional skills that are essential in all areas of science. You’ll be able to learn how to recognise good research and research behaviour, improve your communication abilities and experience the breadth of technologies that are used in academia, industry and many related careers. Visit www.sheffield.ac.uk/sgs to learn more.