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Find out more about self-funded PhD projects in areas where we already have supervisors active and engaged in the research topic in our School of Life Sciences.
Applied Ecology Research Group (AERG)
Several other members of Biology staff with interest in this subject area could be part of the team e.g., Dr Tom Ings, Dr Peter Brown and Dr Sarah Hart.
Global Change Ecology
Needingworth is an active gravel and sand extraction quarry site near St. Ives, Cambridgeshire run by the Hanson/Heidelberg Cement Group. Following the mineral extraction process the land is being restored to form what will be one of the UK’s largest reedbed system. This is occurring sequentially in a series of blocks, which are then to be given over to management by the RSPB. The main focus of the site has been wetlands and the birds that they support. However, as my recent Quarry Life project has shown, additional biodiversity rich habitat, particularly grassland, have been created. While the restored site clearly has importance for biodiversity, it would be very informative for the organisations directly involved, as well as local and national conservation organisations, and the wider community, to be able to quantify the contribution of the site to local biodiversity. In other words, what is the biodiversity footprint of the site? How much is biodiversity enhanced and is there a positive spill-over effect to areas adjacent to the site? The project would aim to measure the invertebrate and other biodiversity of the site and that of equivalent habitats in the surrounding landscape. The information collected, together with data published elsewhere, would be used to parameterise a landscape model that could be used to help inform decisions about future restoration.
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you wish to be considered for this project, you will need to apply for our Biology PhD. In the section of the application form entitled 'Outline research proposal', please quote the above title and include a research proposal.
Applied Ecology Research Group (AERG)
Climate change, species distribution
Climate change is rapidly altering ecosystems and affecting people’s way of life, exerting effects from the individual to biome scale. Since 1500, 322 terrestrial vertebrate species have gone extinct and recorded populations show a 25% decline in abundance. Rapid rates of species decline, extinction and range contraction provide increasing evidence that we are entering a sixth mass extinction period induced by human activities, which is likely to compromise the functioning of ecosystems and affect the wellbeing of humans. These risks are especially prominent in the Arctic, where rapid warming, changing human-related infrastructure, human activity, human extraction of biological resources and contaminants affect animals and in turn the people that depend on animals for socio-economic wellbeing including food and culture.
This PhD will examine how different drivers of change affect wildlife species and ecological communities with arctic distributions. You will examine how species’ responses to climate change varies across their distribution and how communities are responding to arctic change across a range of physical and anthropogenic drivers.
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you wish to be considered for this project, you will need to apply for our Biology PhD. In the section of the application form entitled 'Outline research proposal', please quote the above title and include a research proposal.
Applied Ecology Research Group (AERG)
Dr Fiona Danks (World Conservation Monitoring Centre)
Environmental decision-making, information gaps, conservation, monitoring
Global environmental change is creating some of the highest likelihood and most impactful risks to humans, and the species upon which they depend. This is intensely felt in arctic and northern environments, where rapid warming is driving biophysical and socio-ecological transformation. As the north transforms, we see a rapid expansion of stakeholders, the emergence of novel drivers of change and increased likelihood of new synergies and antagonisms between impacts of drivers of change. Where concurrent rapid changes in the environment and the stakeholder community occur, conflicts over resource use and conservation can be severe. In these contexts, there is a critical need for information to inform decision-making which is both accurate and provides just outcomes for stakeholders.
PhD projects are available which explore the consequences of biases in research and monitoring for our understanding of social-ecological systems and decision-making outcomes. Enquiries are particularly welcomed from those interested in analysing these trends in the Arctic and alpine environments and that relate to wildlife and wildlife management, but we are also happy to discuss interest in other regions and systems. There are opportunities for the use of both social science and natural science methods and we particularly encourage those who wish to work in an interdisciplinary setting. There are also opportunities for analysis-driven projects of existing data (spatial data and imagery) and may be opportunities field-based work.
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you wish to be considered for this project, you will need to apply for our Biology PhD. In the section of the application form entitled 'Outline research proposal', please quote the above title and include a research proposal.
Applied Ecology Research Group (AERG)
Smart Cities
Land management decisions made at the planning stage and in terms of on-going site management are likely to have major impacts on biodiversity. Each decision has consequences at the local site level for biodiversity, particularly for plants and invertebrates, but in turn this affects animals higher in the food chain such as birds. Although we have some understanding of this, we need to learn more about how the combined effects of local management influences biodiversity at a whole town or city scale. This project will quantify the effect of planning and management decisions on invertebrate and other biodiversity at an urban landscape scale. It will use small-scale experiments, fieldwork and published data to parameterise urban landscape models, designed to inform authorities about options for biodiversity enhancement. Ultimately the research will contribute to the development of future urban areas with improved benefits for wildlife and people.
Small-scale invertebrate sampling will be carried out, together with wider-scale habitat mapping. Sampling data will be brought together, with that from the literature, to parameterise landscape models that will enable alternative management practices to be simulated. It will help to ask questions as to what effects local management decisions will make to the biodiversity of whole urban areas. This will represent a more advanced approach to the growing field of urban biodiversity, much of which has been largely observational.
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you wish to be considered for this project, you will need to apply for our Biology PhD. In the section of the application form entitled 'Outline research proposal', please quote the above title and include a research proposal.
Applied Ecology Research Group (AERG)
Dr Helen Wheeler (AERG, Anglia Ruskin University)
Dr Davide Natalini (Global Sustainability Institute)
Environmental decision-making, restoration, rewilding
Rewilding has gained significant attention internationally as an emerging and exciting approach for restoration for sustainable ecosystems but requires stakeholder support for its successful implementation. Rewilding aims to restore interactions between different ecosystem components to create more resilient ecosystems able to withstand the more extreme perturbations expected under changing climate.
To successfully address sustainability challenges, rewilding must both promote biodiversity and meet human needs. To receive support, the policies must support stakeholder goals and values and needs and expectations of stakeholders must inform how and in what contexts we attempt rewilding. In prominent UK examples, rewilding projects have failed due to a lack of local support. Conservation conflicts, whereby stakeholders have divergent conceptions of future landscapes may undermine conservation efforts and cause them to ultimately fail.
Farmers and landowners are affected by rewilding activities near their land and face decisions about whether to engage in rewilding activities on their land. These two decisions will determine the uptake of rewilding. Rewilding has three core ecological aims: increasing food web complexity (such as through reintroducing predators and herbivores), increasing connectivity of rewilded land (to aid species dispersal) and allowing natural disturbance regimes (such as allowing periodic flooding). Rewilding aims to move to low-intervention landscapes. By reducing human intervention, we increase uncertainty of ecosystem trajectories. Policies designed to further these objectives may be seen to negatively impact landowners and farming communities and may generate behaviours which are ultimately damaging unless they are well designed. The PhD will investigate the impact of policy decisions on uptake of rewilding activities through examining stakeholder responses to environmental policies using a range of methods such as Q-methodology and agent-based modelling.
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you wish to be considered for this project, you will need to apply for our Biology PhD. In the section of the application form entitled 'Outline research proposal', please quote the above title and include a research proposal.
Applied Ecology Research Group (AERG)
Several other members of staff with interest in this subject area could be part of the team e.g. Dr Alvin Helden, Dr Tom Ings.
Global Change Ecology
The charismatic honeybee is one of the most well-known of the UK’s 250 bee species. The honeybee is unrivalled in honey production, but wild bees are known to be more effective pollinators of many of our fruiting crops.
All of our bees make a unique contribution towards the functioning of our ecosystems, but they are struggling in the face of agricultural intensification, increased pesticide-use and the loss of floral and nesting resources. There is a growing public awareness about the importance of pollinator conservation and many are taking up amateur beekeeping in a bid to save the bees. Though well-intentioned, there is a growing body of evidence showing that in resource-limited environments honeybees can out-compete wild bees, lowering their reproductive success and exasperating their declines.
This project will use large-scale field experiments to evaluate levels of competition between honeybees and wild pollinators across rural Cambridgeshire. It will consider how competition influences plant-pollinator interaction networks and assess whether effects filter down to changes in the reproductive success or population size of wild pollinator species.
Ultimately the project aims to identify the habitat conditions that are necessary to minimise competition between managed and wild bees and to provide guidelines about the floral requirements needed for both to thrive.
Candidates should have experience of carrying out independent ecological research and conducting statistical and spatial analyses.
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you wish to be considered for this project, you will need to apply for our Biology PhD. In the section of the application form entitled 'Outline research proposal', please quote the above title and include a research proposal.
Behavioural Ecology Research Group (BEEC)
Cognitive abilities, Social relationships
The requirements of living in social groups, as well as forming and maintaining social relationships are hypothesized to be major drivers behind the evolution of cognitive abilities, such as attention, learning, and inhibitory control. Traditionally, the evolution of cognitive abilities in non-human animals is investigated via a comparative approach, testing cognitive performance in different species, varying in their ecology or social organisation. From these results, researchers can infer when in evolutionary history particular cognitive processes have evolved and under which ecological and social circumstances. In most cases, specific model organisms, e.g. primates, corvids, parrots, rats, pigeons are very much in focus, whereas other species are often ignored.
This project aims to investigate how social relationships shape cognitive abilities, e.g. delay of gratification, learning, in group living animals, with a specific focus on previously understudied species, e.g. birds of prey, chicken. Further, comparative studies regarding the evolution of socio-cognitive skills have also generated conflicting results. The proposed project aims at incorporating an intraspecific approach, investigating how individual variation in cognitive performance correlates with an individual’s ability to form and maintain social relationships.
The proposed project will use standardized cognitive tests, e.g. delay maintenance, reversal learning, to assess cognitive performance in different species and multiple individuals, with a special focus on repeatability in cognitive performance. The candidate will make significant advances in the field of comparative cognition.
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you wish to be considered for this project, you will need to apply for our Biology PhD. In the section of the application form entitled 'Outline research proposal', please quote the above title and include a research proposal.
Applied Ecology Research Group (AERG)
Dr Helen Wheeler (AERG)
Dr Nikoleta Jones (Department of Land Economy, Cambridge University)
Several other members of staff with interest in this subject area could be part of the team.
Rewilding
Rewilding projects create both opportunities and challenges for local communities and other stakeholders. The core goals of rewilding projects often focus on ecological outcomes related to restoring ecological processes. In addition to these core aims, a wide range of further aims have also become aligned with core rewilding objectives. Many conservation projects also have outcomes that are unintended, and these are likely to occur when undertaking rewilding. Aligned objectives and unintended outcomes have the potential to create a much broader range of impacts than core aims alone. Investigating the potential consequences of these core and aligned agendas will facilitate planning to promote positive impacts and mitigate risks of undesirable impacts.
This PhD will identify and explore the relationships between ecological and social core and aligned aims in rewilding and intended and unintended outcomes. The PhD will include analysis of the outcomes of rewilding perceived by different stakeholders in different social and ecological contexts. The PhD will draw on the experience from conservation initiatives globally to assess potential impacts of core and aligned aims that we have identified. We seek a student interested in interdisciplinary research using both natural and social science methodologies.
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you wish to be considered for this project, you will need to apply for our Biology PhD. In the section of the application form entitled 'Outline research proposal', please quote the above title and include a research proposal.
Behavioural Ecology Research Group (BEEC)
Evolution, Anatomy, Geometric Morphometrics, Communication, Language
Spoken language is one of the most distinctive characteristics of our species. Yet, our understanding of the evolution of this quintessentially human trait is far from complete. The dominant approach for the last few decades has been the search for fossil evidence of variation in vocal anatomy. However, most anatomical traits associated with speech are soft tissues, which do not fossilise, making it very difficult to establish when speech first evolved. This line of enquiry has diverted attention away from alternative questions that are equally interesting and more accessible empirically. In particular, it is probably more important to ask how and why specific anatomical changes for human speech took place. These questions can be addressed by applying the “comparative model” – using data from living species to shed light on the anatomy and behaviour of extinct species and reconstruct evolutionary scenarios.
Our research focuses on the comparative anatomy of the larynx and hyoid bone (the only bone in the larynx) in mammals. Evidence suggests that there were important shifts in the size and shape of the larynx and hyoid during hominin evolution and there appears to be a correlation between the morphology of the hyoid and the presence and size of air sacs in the larynx. Air sacs are air-filled cavities which are attached to the larynx in many primates, including all non-human apes, but, intriguingly, are absent in modern humans. They are thought to play a role in loud calls and are probably not necessary for the type of quiet vocal interaction that typifies human conversation. This suggests that the evolution of the modern human hyoid is associated with the loss of air sacs and, by extension, of loud calls. Hyoids are possible to find in museum collections, and their size and shape is easy to quantify using geometric morphometric methods. Larynges are much harder to source, as soft tissues are much rarer in collections. However, over the last three years we have worked closely with collaborators in Austria and Japan to build and scan a large collection of larynges. Thus, we are uniquely positioned to carry out research into this topic.
This project would analyse the size and shape of the larynx in one or more mammalian orders to model the evolutionary process. Laboratory and desk-based approaches would be necessary, potentially including CT scanning, geometric morphometrics, analysis of histological data and phylogenetic comparative methods. However, the exact nature of the project would be open for discussion and development with the candidate – in line with their skills and interests.
Interested candidates should contact Dr Jacob Dunn to discuss project ideas. Please note that this is currently a self-funded project.
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you wish to be considered for this project, you will need to apply for our Biology PhD. In the section of the application form entitled 'Outline research proposal', please quote the above title and include a research proposal.
Behavioural Ecology Research Group (BEEC)
Animal Communication
Vocal communication is fundamental to primate social behaviour. However, vocalisations vary extremely widely among primate taxa in terms of both acoustic parameters (e.g., call frequency) and the range of vocalisations different species produce (i.e., vocal repertoire). This project aims to develop a new framework to investigate the evolution of primate communication systems using interdisciplinary methods. Research will focus on two model taxa, howler monkeys (Alouatta) and colobine monkeys (Colobinae).
The project aims to: 1) describe the full variation in vocal anatomy among the study species; 2) describe the range of vocalisations produced by each species using bioacoustics methods; and 3) carry out playback experiments on selected species to understand the behavioural function of vocal signals.
The candidate will make significant advances in theoretical aspects of the evolution of animal signals, integrating statistical, field and laboratory analyses. This covers a range of expertise, including: spatial analyses, phylogenetic comparative methods, bioacoustics and anatomy/morphometrics.
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you wish to be considered for this project, you will need to apply for our Biology PhD. In the section of the application form entitled 'Outline research proposal', please quote the above title and include a research proposal.
Applied Ecology Research Group (AERG)
Several other members of Biology staff with interest in this subject area could be part of the team e.g., Dr Peter Brown and Dr Sarah Hart.
Global Change Ecology
The National Pollinator Strategy was published by the UK Government in Nov 2014, in recognition of the important economic and biological role of pollinators (Defra, 2014). Broadly speaking, its aims are to increase public awareness and scientific knowledge of UK pollinators and to take action that will reverse recent declines in their populations. One particular focus of the strategy is to modify habitat management in both urban and rural areas, to provide better foraging and nesting resources for bees and other pollinators. However the insects that act as pollinators are only part of the wider invertebrate community. There are very many other species, with different ecological roles, including those that form the vitally important ecosystem services of decomposition and pest control. This project would set out to investigate the effects of implementing the National Pollinator Strategy on theses non-target invertebrates, and in particular focus on the ecosystem services they provide. It is likely that this national strategy is beneficial to wider groups but this ought to be measured, rather than assumed. Working with landowners and managers that are implementing pollinator friendly management, the biodiversity of other invertebrates will be measured. Experiments will be set out that test rates of decomposition and natural enemy (predation and parasitism) activity. The overall aim of the project would be to use the findings to provide feedback to the National Pollinator Strategy and if necessary to provide recommendations to modification of management practice to maintain support to for other invertebrates while maintaining its positive focus on pollinators.
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you wish to be considered for this project, you will need to apply for our Biology PhD. In the section of the application form entitled 'Outline research proposal', please quote the above title and include a research proposal.
Social impacts of decision-making processes under wildlife conservation conflicts in Scotland
Research Group
Applied Ecology Research Group (AERG)
Proposed supervisory team
Dr Helen Wheeler (AERG, Anglia Ruskin University)
Dr Scott Newey (James Hutton Institute)
Dr Nikoleta Jones (Department of Land Economy, Cambridge University)
Dr Rosalind Bryce (Centre for Mountain Studies, University of the Highlands and Islands)
Theme
Wildlife management, conservation conflict
Summary of the research project
Globally rapid environmental change is one of the most substantial planetary risks to wildlife, and human societies. Rapid changes aggravate conflicts over resource use, land use and conservation, and create hard-to-solve decisions for managers and policy-makers. Managers face the challenge of following sustainable development principles and promoting biodiversity conservation, while considering the socio-economic context where decisions are implemented. There are a wide range of approaches, both from ecological and social sciences, that aim to collect and synthesise information in order to be incorporated in decision-making processes for conflict resolution. However, these approaches fail to combine ecological information with an in-depth understanding of the social dimensions of conflicts. The result is poor scientific understanding, poorly designed policies and discontent, disputes with stakeholders and social exclusion.
The proposed PhD will assess how different approaches in gathering information for decision-making affect stakeholders' attitudes and behaviours towards conflicts and propose ways that approaches can be combined and at the same time be more inclusive. In particular the PhD will explore in the context of existing approaches: a) People's attitudes toward decision-making and their level of participation; b) Rule breaking behaviour and c) Disputes concerning decisions. The PhD will also explore ways of combining different approaches to collect information to produce an inter-disciplinary decision-making framework that places social equity at its core.
The PhD will use a comparative approach focused on wildlife management activities in northern Scotland. Here, conflicts centre around protection of wild species such as mountain hares and birds of prey, and grazing species such as geese, management for hunting grouse and deer species, mitigating the effect of herbivory on landscapes and agricultural land and Rewilding. Conservation projects in the area generate conflict because of their significant social impacts such as restrictions on hunting, change in the use of agricultural land and forest areas but also because of differences in worldviews between the ethics of different management actions. Local socio-economic challenges, such as low levels of employment and low social mobility, also create additional barriers in managing such conflicts.
Where you'll study
Cambridge
Funding
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
Next steps
If you wish to be considered for this project, you will need to apply for our Biology PhD. In the section of the application form entitled 'Outline research proposal', please quote the above title and include a research proposal.