LEC - Biodiversity and Global Change

Biodiversity and Global Change

Overview

Two of the most urgent environmental issues facing mankind are global change and the accelerating loss of biological diversity. These issues raise many challenges for scientists, conservationists, land managers and policy makers. For instance, there is a pressing need to understand how biodiversity influences ecosystem services, including carbon sequestration, nutrient and water cycling, crop pollination and pest regulation, and how ecosystems might be managed to protect and enhance biodiversity under global change. Moreover, farmers are under increasing pressure to meet human needs for food production, whilst also minimizing environmental impacts and delivering non-market ecosystem services, including biodiversity conservation.

Our research tackles these issues from a range of ecological, evolutionary and social perspectives. Studies range from those on the evolutionary ecology of interactions between hosts and their parasites, to studies on the consequences of major land use shifts for biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and human welfare. Much of our research is interdisciplinary, including studies on the interactions of social and ecological constituents of the Earth-system.

Funding

Our work is funded by a variety of sources, including the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), the European Union (EU), the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), the Department for International Development (DfID), the Royal Society and the Leverhulme Trust and Nuffield Foundation. We regularly host visitors from various parts of the world, and welcome enquiries from people wishing to work in the group.

Particular research topics include:

Soil biodiversity and ecosystem processes (Bardgett, Orwin)
Plant-soil interactions and ecosystem carbon cycling (Bardgett, Orwin, Barlow)
Humans impacts on tropical forest biodiversity (Barlow)
Climate change, biodiversity and ecosystem processes (Menéndez, Bardgett)
Biological indicators and local environmental knowledge (Ellis)
Citizen science and local climate change (Ellis)
Spatial ecology and biodiversity (Blackburn)
Remote sensing of vegetation ecophysiology and dynamics (Blackburn)
Influence of herbivores on terrestrial ecosystems (Bardgett, Wilby, Wilson)
Biodiversity and ecosystem services (Wilby, Bardgett, Menéndez, Orwin, Barlow)
Effects of management on biodiversity in agricultural systems (Wilby, Bardgett)
Biological control of insect crop pests (Wilson, Wilby)
The behavioural and evolutionary ecology of family conflicts (Hartley)
Evolutionary ecology of interactions between hosts and their parasites (Wilson)
Sexual selection in birds and mammals (Hartley, Wilson)

Current PhD students

Go to LEC PhD student page or click link below (where available) to go directly to the LEC webpage of an individual PhD student associated with the Biodiversity and Global Change theme: