Linking land use to bird community dynamics through functional trait approaches.

在热带等世界其他地区，尽管迫切需要循证方法来指导环境管理，但可获得的已解决数据要少得多。世界上大多数生物多样性都在这些地区，它们的土地利用变化率也是最高的。学生将分析这样的非洲热带数据集，包括插入的存在-缺席数据、按物种平均的特征数据或使用系统发育关系插入的数据。这将需要开发新的分析方法，将全球土地利用和气候变化与生态系统功能联系起来。至关重要的是，学生将开发验证方法来量化不确定性，方法是对解析良好的数据集使用相同的简化方法，并对预测进行敏感性分析。此外，学生将设计新的方法来测试使用系统发育多样性作为功能特征的替代品的适宜性，后者可能不适用于其他物种群体。该项目将为更明确的方法框架铺平道路，以便在数据匮乏的情况下了解土地利用对生物群落和相关生态系统功能的影响。其成果将是一套创新的方法，可以将土地使用与群落组成和生态系统功能联系起来，这也将适用于其他物种群体。

In other world regions such as the tropics, much less resolved data are available, despite the urgent requirement for evidence-based approaches to guide environmental management. Most of the world's biodiversity is found in these regions and they also have the highest rates of land-use change. The student will analyse such an Afrotropical dataset, comprising, interpolated presence-absence data, trait data averaged by species or interpolated using phylogenetic relationships. This will require the development of new analytical approaches linking global land-use and climate change to ecosystem functions. Crucially, the student will develop validation approaches to quantify uncertainty by using the same simplified methods on the well resolved datasets and conducting sensitivity analysis on predictions. In addition, the student will devise new methods to test the suitability of using phylogenetic diversity as a proxy for functional traits, where the latter may be absent for other species groups. The project will pave the way to a clearer methodological framework for understanding land-use impacts on biological communities and associated ecosystem function in data poor scenarios. The outcome will be a set of innovative methods which can link land use to community composition and ecosystem function, which will also be applicable to other species groups.