Image: Small red damselfly (Erythromma viridulum m) – copyright Pam Taylor
The University of Exeter, National Biodiversity Network, and Centre for Ecology and Hydrology are jointly offering a PhD studentship. This is a unique opportunity to address an emerging scientific challenge, and improve monitoring and conservation.
There are some 1800 species living in the UK that originate from elsewhere and have been introduced by humans. Some of these non-native species are classed as “invasive”, meaning they cause ruinous damage to ecosystems and/or threaten native species. However, another kind of non-native species has emerged: species that are colonising the UK without human assistance (“natural colonists”), often because climate change is creating suitable habitat for these species in the UK. Incidences of “natural” colonisation are on the rise as climate change progresses. It is increasingly suspected that some natural colonists might pose a serious threat to UK biodiversity and ecosystems. However, there is a major problem with evaluating this suspicion. Invasive impacts are assessed based on a species having high abundance across a large area, causing obvious declines in native species or ecosystem services (both of which usually require the species to have been resident in the UK for a long time), and/or being a known threat elsewhere (which requires the species to have been introduced elsewhere). Recent natural colonists have not been resident in the UK for a long time, and are rarely introduced elsewhere, so the risk they pose is un-investigated.
The studentship will perform a comparative study of the impact of natural colonists and human-introduced non-natives, based on techniques that detect early-warning signals of invasive impacts. The aim is to improve the monitoring of non-native species regardless of their origin, and if warranted for any natural colonist species to create a species alert and monitoring scheme for that species.
The student will work closely with the NBN Secretariat, which manages a UK-wide partnership to coordinate the collation and dissemination of biodiversity data and analyses, sharing >110 million biological records via the NBN Gateway. The studentship is also in collaboration with NERC’s Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH), the UK’s centre for excellence in terrestrial and freshwater science, which conducts high quality research projects on nationally-important datasets. The student will therefore be trained in highly novel science, and will pursue a project that will directly inform monitoring and conservation strategies.
Applying
Interested applicants should contact Regan Early (r.early@exeter.ac.uk) with a CV and a brief statement of interests in the first instance. Application details will be sent out once they are availablee. The apprenticeship will be advertised on findaphd.com. The studentship will start in Sept / Oct 2016.