'Testing the mechanisms driving climate change impacts on biodiversity'

Dr Karl Evans (Lead) and Dr Duncan Cameron
Given the intense interest in the consequences of climate change for biodiversity empirical tests of the mechanisms proposed to drive these changes are astonishingly rare. This severely limits the capacity to assess species’ relative vulnerabilities and to predict future changes in assemblage structure and function. In plant communities changes in species’ competitive interactions are likely to play a major role in shaping future assemblages. In temperate regions one mechanism that is widely predicted to alter these competitive interactions in a warming world is spring frost damage, but evidence is very rare. Exposure is predicted to increase because the emergence of vegetation is advancing more rapidly than the date of the last frost. Species’ sensitivity to this damage is also predicted to increase due to physiological changes driven by increased carbon dioxide concentrations. This PhD will use a holistic approach that combines community ecology and eco-physiology to develop substantially the capacity to predict climate change impacts on plant assemblages. In so doing the student will have the opportunity to conduct research in a number of key areas of climate change research including the importance of local adaptation, evolutionary capacity, interactions between different drivers of environmental change, and the capacity for range shifts. The student will use the world class environmental control facilities at the University of Sheffield, and will also have access to nearby field sites supporting long running environmental change experiments.

To apply, please complete an online application form which can be found at www.shef.ac.uk/postgraduate/research/apply/applying
The closing date is 15th January 2013