Accepting PhD Students

PhD projects

PhD project currently available:

Translocating an ecosystem engineer: the impact of wood ants on woodland communities
Funded by NERC ACCE+ DLA
Project details and how to apply here:
https://www.findaphd.com/phds/project/acce-dla-programme-translocating-an-ecosystem-engineer-the-impact-of-wood-ants-on-woodland-communities/?p178907
Deadline 8th January 2025.

MSc by Research opportunities

Assessing the conservation status of wood ants across Europe.

Background
Wood ants are ecosystem engineers, increasing biodiversity in the woodlands where they occur. They are also both habitat specialists, and poor dispersers, making them vulnerable to woodland fragmentation. IUCN Red Listing assesses the extinction risk faced by a species, providing evidenced information about their range, habitat, ecology, threats and trajectory, to enable informed conservation policy. A subset of wood ant species were Red List assessed in 1996; other wood ant species have never been assessed. There is a therefore a pressing need for up to date and complete Red List assessments for this group.

Objectives
1 To collate and evaluate current and historic data on wood ant distributions across their range
2 To carry out Red List assessments for wood ant species based on these datasets.

Methodology
This project will involve both collating and evaluating existing published data, and also working with newly collected datasets on wood ant distributions. The new data are being collected as part of the European-wide project MonitAnt, and it will thus be possible for data gaps to be identified and targeted as part of the integration between the Red List assessment process and the data collection. IUCN Red List methodology will be used to conduct the red list assessments.

Impact
The outcome of this project will be Red List assessments for wood ant species, which will identify the level of threat these species are facing, and will help inform woodland management and conservation decisions for these keystone species.

Project Partners
This project will be supervised by Professor Elva Robinson and Professor Colin Beale, University of York. The MonitAnt Team (https://www.biodiversa.eu/2024/04/15/monitant/) will support the project with data and expertise from across Europe. The project will also be supported by the Species Survival Commission’s Ant Specialist Group Red List Authority Coordinator, Gabrielle Flinn.

Deadline 16th May 2025.

More information
To discuss suitability for the project, contact [email protected]