PhD Studentship - Computer Modelling of Extinction, and the Impact of Environmental Stress

Deadline: Accepted all year round

No. of positions: 1

Funding for this project covers tuition fees, UKRI minimum annual stipend (currently £19,237/annum) and up to a £5k/annum research training support grant for the full duration of the 4-year programme.

How do species respond to stress? What are the patterns of extinction in species, and, and at a larger scale, during mass extinctions? How do ecosystems recover from mass extinctions? These processes play out across a wide range of space and time. We can investigate them experimentally using computer models and use empirical datasets to validate results. This project will use the spatially explicit eco-evolutionary simulation software REvoSim to investigate how species ranges, populations, and interactions respond to environmental stressors, and how this changes as species go extinct. We will use the same platform to simulate extinction events on larger temporal and spatial scales, as well as subsequent recoveries. We will compare results from our simulations to - on smaller scales, ecological data, and on larger scales, to large datasets compiled from fossil occurrence data. The final element of the project will combine these data partitions, and assess the potential of different machine learning approaches in identifying species threats when informed by these disparate sources of data; we will compare these outcomes to the wealth of alternative AI approaches developed using complementary data sources.

Russell Garwood is a palaeontologist at the University of Manchester who uses X-rays, computers, and fossils to study evolution and the history of life. Joshua Scott Lynn is an ecologist and Lecturer in Global Change Biology at the University of Manchester.

www.russellgarwood.co.uk/orcid: 0000-0002-2803-9471

research.manchester.ac.uk/en/persons/joshua.lynn/orcid: 0000-0002-7190-7991

The standard academic entry requirement for this PhD is an upper second-class (2:1) honours degree in a discipline directly relevant to the PhD (or international equivalent) OR any upper-second class (2:1) honours degree and a Master’s degree at merit in a discipline directly relevant to the PhD (or international equivalent).

Please contact the supervisors for this project before you apply (contact details; Dr Garwood - russell.garwood@manchester.ac.uk and joshua.lynn@manchester.ac.uk).

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