Evaluating the long-term impact of neonicotinoids on the trophic cascade

该奖学金解决了世界上最大的当代环境挑战之一，即如何确保受类烟碱影响的土壤生态系统的持续生态系统服务交付。这项跨学科研究将涉及实地监测和实验室方法的培训，并将重点关注与类烟碱污染土壤相互作用的三种可能受影响最严重的物种，即土壤无脊椎动物、独居蜜蜂和刺猬。可耕种作物如油菜的种植越来越依赖于一系列类烟碱化合物的种子包衣来控制昆虫害虫。它们的使用被认为对世界各地的传粉者产生了重大影响，导致欧洲和英国禁止使用它们。类烟碱应用对一系列生物群的长期影响仍然未知，但可能包括整个营养级的级联影响（即人类引起的营养级联）。博士学位的第一年将专注于环境和土壤科学研究的正式研究培训。作为研究实验设计的一部分，学生还将对英国可耕地系统进行生态系统服务测绘评估。在第二年，学生将进行实地规模的试验，以评估不同土壤条件下类烟碱的影响。第三年将量化营养影响和关系，以不同的历史使用模式和现场残留浓度使用的三个目标物种。博士将被写了科学论文，以最大限度地提高培训经验。该奖学金将由班戈尔大学（保罗·克罗斯博士、马特·海沃德博士和戴维·琼斯教授）和CEH（理查德·皮威尔）共同监督。

This studentship addresses one of the world's biggest contemporary environmental challenges, namely how to ensure the continued ecosystem service delivery of neonicotinoid impacted soil ecosystems. This interdisciplinary study will involve training in field monitoring and laboratory methods, and will focus on three of the potentially most affected species interacting with neonicotinoid contaminated soils, namely soil invertebrates, solitary bees and hedgehogs. The cultivation of arable crops, such as oil seed rape, have relied increasingly on the seed coating of a range of neonicotinoid compounds to control insect pests. Their use is thought to have significantly impacted pollinators across the world resulting in their banned use throughout Europe and the UK. The long-term impacts of neonicotinoid applications on a range of biota remains unknown but is likely to include cascading impacts throughout the trophic levels (i.e. a human-induced trophic cascade). Year 1 of the PhD will focus on formal research training in environmental and soil science research. The student will also undertake an ecosystem service mapping assessment of UK arable systems as part of the study's experimental design. In Year 2, the student will undertake field-scale trials to evaluate the impact of neonicotinoids under different soil conditions. Year 3 will quantify the trophic impact and relationship to differing historical usage patterns and in-field residual concentrations use on the three target species.The PhD will be written up as scientific papers to maximise the training experience. The studentship will be jointly supervised by Bangor University (Dr Paul Cross, Dr Matt Hayward and Prof Davey Jones) and CEH (Richard Pywell).