Loktak Lake, located in Manipur, is the largest freshwater lake in NE India, declared a Ramsar site in 1990. It is divided into three main basins which have different land use practices by local populations, with the southern being in the Keibul Lamjao National Park. This National Park is also the last natural habitat of […]

Rivers are among the world’s most threatened ecosystems. Freshwater fisheries are at risk from multiple stressors including climate change, pollutants and the presence of dams which inhibit fish movement and migration. Globally, only 37% of the world’s rivers remain free of dams, but in the UK only 1% of watercourses are unimpeded by barriers due […]

The ecological and evolutionary transitions that accompany environmental change often involve alterations in diet and accompanying morphological adaptations. These changes are abundantly well researched and understood. Surprisingly, the genetically encoded metabolic modifications required to deal with dietary change are largely unknown in wild species, despite the fundamental importance of energetics for organismal function and the […]

Applications are invited for a PhD studentship within the NERC-ENVISION Doctoral Training Partnership with a project entitled: “Modelling the future of coastal soft cliffs under changing climate”. Coastal soft cliffs are extremely important components of coastal environments worldwide. Their retreat is a global problem that threatens coastal communities. Climate change affects soft cliffs retreat; however, […]

Mussels, bryozoans and sponges are sessile filter-feeders that are known to fulfil important ecosystem functions in temperate freshwater habitats, such as water clearance, nutrient cycling and promotion of benthic biodiversity; yet in tropical freshwaters, their functional roles are poorly understood. At the same time, anthropogenic pressures, including deforestation and land-use change, have caused tropical filter-feeding […]

Lake ecosystems host diverse communities of organisms which show great variation over seasonal, year-to-year and decadal timescales. Growing evidence demonstrates that these communities are already being impacted by climate change, but much existing research has focused on the ecology of spring and summer communities, with winter communities receiving less attention. We know that winters are […]

The project will investigate how increasing temperatures are affecting northern butterflies in the UK, and test the potential for managing habitats to promote climate change adaptation.  It provides an exciting opportunity for an ecologist, with an interest in conservation and a desire to undertake crucial research using state of the art techniques in remote sensing […]

How coral reefs can sustain their extreme biomass of large reef fishes has continued to puzzle scientists. By living fast and dying young, small, bottom-dwelling (‘cryptobenthic’) reef fishes have been suggested as an important part of coral reef productivity, fuelling the foodweb. Yet, cryptobenthic fish communities are strongly dependent on environmental conditions, and as such […]

The vast majority of plant species use C3 photosynthesis. However, a turbo-charged form of photosynthesis called C4 evolved independently in nearly 70 lineages and is used by our most productive food and bioenergy crops. C4 photosynthesis evolved repeatedly from the ancestral C3 type via a series of modifications to leaf biochemistry and anatomy, which inevitably […]

Melting of the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets contributes more than one third of global sea-level rise. One of the most rapidly changing polar regions is the Antarctic Peninsula which, during the second half of the 20th Century, was one of the fastest warming regions on Earth. Temperature increases across this region have led to […]