PhD Studentship : Towards a General Understanding of Population Change in Insectivorous Birds: Linking Demography to Resource, NERC GW4+ DTP PhD Studentship for September 2025 Entry

About the Partnership

This project is one of a number that are in competition for funding from the NERC Great Western Four+ Doctoral Training Partnership (GW4+ DTP).  The GW4+ DTP consists of the Great Western Four alliance of the University of Bath, University of Bristol, Cardiff University and the University of Exeter plus five Research Organisation partners: British Antarctic Survey, British Geological Survey, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, the Natural History Museum and Plymouth Marine Laboratory. The partnership aims to provide a broad training in earth and environmental sciences, designed to train tomorrow’s leaders in earth and environmental science. For further details about the programme please see http://nercgw4plus.ac.uk/

Project details

For information relating to the research project please contact the lead Supervisor via S.Bearhop@exeter.ac.uk

Project Aims and Methods

Insectivorous birds provide humans with many important regulating and cultural ecosystem services but there have been widespread changes in their populations across the globe in recent years. Not surprisingly, environmental change has been identified as a major cause, but the proximate mechanisms often remain unclear. 

Although population declines are extensive, populations in some regions are stable or increasing, providing a natural experiment to test hypotheses that can reveal the mechanisms driving change.

While broad climate and habitat variables are linked some patterns of population change, they explain very little variance in population trajectories. To understand this, we need spatiotemporally explicit measures of bird population size that can be matched to the resources they need (i.e. insects) which have been unavailable until relatively recently. Working closely with the RSPB and BTO this PhD would take advantage of new high resolution invertebrate distribution maps combined with breeding bird survey (BBS) data to investigate the extent to which changes in invertebrate prey (key preyfor each bird species) are linked to patterns of population change in a range of insectivorous birds alongside climate, landuse, and weather. There will also be the potential for a fieldwork component working closely with RSPB researchers and citizen scientists. 

Project partners

The Royal Society for The Protection of Birds (RSPB) will contribute supervision and mentoring, hosting internship-type visits to RSPB HQ. and funding all field work. 

Training

The DTP offers funding to undertake specialist training relating to the student’s specialist area of research. 

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