PhD Studentship: Pollinator responses to climate change

Highlights:

• State of the art lab based physiological studies of insect responses to climate change and environmental stress.
• Unique field-based assessments of pollinator diversity and phenology within woodland climate change simulation
• Interdisciplinary research environment and access to diverse stakeholders in industry, policy and government to integrate these outputs in order to develop mitigation strategies for pollinator decline.

Overview

Climate change will affect many species and biological processes, including those that underpin key ecosystem services such as pollination. An important knowledge gap, however, remains our limited understanding of how climate warming will alter the seasonal life cycle (phenology) of key pollinator species, potentially decoupling their interaction with plants. Work in our lab has identified that disruption of insect winter dormancy (diapause), is likely to play a key role [1], leading to high winter mortality [2] and/or loss of synchrony in insect spring emergence with the timing of flowering. This could have dramatic impacts on pollinator diversity, abundance and fitness (as well as the plants they pollinate – including many crops). Woodlands provide a critical winter refuge for numerous pollinator species in the UK, as well as access to important floral resources and nest sites [3]. This project will take advantage of the state-of-the-art Birmingham Institute of Forestry Research (BiFoR) facility: http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/activity/bifor/index.aspx as its primary field site.
The lab-based component of this project will employ controlled environment rooms and incubators to investigate how different climate scenarios influence the diapause response in key ‘model’ pollinator species. The consequences of disrupted diapause on winter mortality, diapause duration/timing of spring emergence and post diapause fitness will then be assessed [4]. The capacity for extending diapause and the long term cold storage of pollinators to help supplement declining natural populations will also be investigated. The field-based component will then document how different species phenology patterns map onto climate and microclimate data recorded at the BIFoR site. This taps into an ongoing 10 year experiment investigating climate change responses in the entire woodland system, including access to data on factors driving flowering phenology in order to better understand pollinator-plant interactions. Combined, these outputs will allow us to develop predictive models of climate change impacts on pollinator phenology, and test these models with field observations and climate data [5]. Through interaction with an extensive network of collaborators in industry, policy, and conservation we will then seek to develop mitigation strategies to tackle pollinator decline.

Methodology

The Hayward lab has multiple ongoing projects investigating insect diapause and responses to climate change, and provides access to state of the art environmental control facilities. Both the Hayward and Sadler labs are highly experienced in field sampling of insects/monitoring phenology, and multiple sampling methods (pan traps, malaise traps, canopy sampling etc.) are already in place at the BIFoR site. Extensive climate monitoring equipment is also in place at BIFoR, and the DR will receive training in how to use all this equipment. In addition, there is also an opportunity to employ molecular techniques to further investigate the processes underpinning diapause regulation within the Environmental Genomics Facility at UoB. Subsequent data analysis will determine spatial and temporal associations with climate variables and across woodland types.



Any further questions about the project, please contact:

Dr Scott Hayward
School of Biosciences
University of Birmingham
e-mail: s.a.hayward@bham.ac.uk

Funding Notes

Applicants will ideally have/be studying for a Masters level qualification, as well as a 1sr or 2:1 BSc in a relevant discipline.

CENTA studentships are for 3.5 years and are funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). In addition to the full payment of their tuition fees, successful candidates will receive the following financial support.

Annual stipend, set at £14,553 for 2017/18.
Research training support grant (RTSG) of £8,000.

References

1. Bale, J. S. & Hayward, S. A. L. (2010) Insect overwintering in a changing climate. Journal of Experimental Biology 213: 980-994.
2. Owen, E. L., Bale, J. S. and Hayward, S. A. L. (2013) Can winter-active bumblebees survive the cold? Assessing the cold tolerance of Bombus terrestris audax and the effects of pollen feeding. PLoS ONE 8: e80061.
3. Jha, S. & Kremen C. (2013) Resource diversity and landscape-level homogeneity drive native bee foraging. PNAS 110: 555-558
4. Coleman, P. C., Bale, J. S. and Hayward S. A. L. (2014) Cross generation plasticity in cold hardiness is associated with diapause, but not the non-diapause developmental pathway, in the blow fly, Calliphora vicina. Journal of Experimental Biology 217:1454-1461
5. Roberts et al. (2015) Predicting a change in the order of spring phenology in temperate forests. Global Change Biology 21: 2603-2611.