PhD oppertunity

Dear All

Please pass on to anyone you think might be interested.

Many thanks

Stu

University of Exeter 
School of Biosciences 

PhD Studentships in Ecology

Project title:  Novel technologies for quantifying ecosystem function and biodiversity 

Three-year studentship: tuition fees (UK/EU rate) and annual stipend at current research council rate

Primary supervisor: Dr Stuart Bearhop
Secondary supervisor: Dr Frank Van Veen
Secondary supervisor: Dr Andrew Jackson (University College Dublin) 
The Food and Environment Research Agency supervisor: Dr Robbie McDonald

Deadline for applications: 23rd May 2009 (we plan to interview in Cornwall during early June)

Project summary: 
It is widely acknowledged that environmental change is the major threat to global biodiversity.
Environmental perturbations (invasive species, pollution, eutrophication etc) may impact
ecosystems in many ways and while effects such as species loss are often detectable, other deleterious
processes such alterations in the relationships among species (changing food web structure) are much
less obvious. Many of these measures of food web structure (e.g. foodweb complexity, food chain length,
total niche area, etc.) have been advocated as indicators of ecosystem function and thus understanding
such changes may be crucial to the preservation of biodiversity. Moreover being able to measure changes
in ecosystem function in a rapid fashion would have the potential to radically improve the evaluatio
 n of human impacts on ecosystems.
Until recently, proxies for ecosystem function have been largely unexplored perhaps because of the
difficulty in generating measures of ecosystem function using conventional approaches (such as
building foodwebs with stomach analyses). However recent developments in the field of stable isotopes
have the potential to enable ecosystem function metrics to be generated rapidly and could revolutionise
the way in which we monitor the environment and enhance our understanding of the key processes involved in
structuring communities.
The aim of this PhD is to use a series of experiments and "real world" situations to evaluate the use of stable
isotopes in generating measures of foodweb structure and in turn biodiversity AND ecosystem
assessment. It will also investigate some of the more fundamental questions about the processes driving
community structure. Building on the expanding collaborative research programme between the Food and
Environment Research Agency and the University of Exeter, the PhD project will combine both field and lab
approaches. The successful candidate will be based at the Centre for Ecology & Conservation (CEC) at the
University of Exeter's new multi-million pound campus in Cornwall. S/he will also spend periods at
Fera's laboratories in York and time in the field. This broad research prospectus
  will give opportunities for interacting with a range of researchers, field biologists and analysts. Open
to students from the European Union (although your spoken and written English should be of a high
standard), the successful candidate will have (or expect) a 1st class or high 2:1 class (or equivalent) in
biology or related subject, and excellent academic references. Applications from numerate students
are particularly welcome. 

For informal enquiries contact (Stuart Bearhop:
s.bearhop@...)  

Apply by CV and covering letter, providing contact details for two academic referees, to Stuart Bearhop: s.bearhop@...