Impacts of environmental change on the structure and stability of Antarctic food webs

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Marine ecosystems around Antarctica are characterised by high numbers of penguins, seals, whales, and their common prey, krill. These ecosystems are poorly understood compared to every other ocean, but are experiencing some of the most dramatic effects of climate change on earth. The project will draw on data collected by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and other Antarctic researchers over the past three decades to determine the environmental drivers of changing predator diets and the properties of Southern Ocean food webs that affect their stability. The proposed network-based analyses and modelling approaches are at the cutting edge of current research and will offer exciting new insights into the fate of Antarctic ecosystems in the face of global change.