Insect population responses to air pollution

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This project will conduct national scale analyses of air pollution impacts on insect populations usinglong-term data-sets monitoring over 1,000 terrestrial insect species, and experimental analyses ofdirect and indirect effects of nitrogen dioxide pollution on insects. The student will work with JNCCand Natural Resources Wales to use these data to explore quantifying ecological safe limits for airpollution, and how these can feed into reporting indicators for the 25 year environment plan. Oursupervisory team have an excellent track-record of supporting students in delivering high qualityresearch papers (e.g. in PNAS and Global Change Biology) and delivering impact throughco-supervisors' organisations (JNCC, NRW and CEH).There is negligible understanding of ecological safe limits of air pollution, or how impacts onindividuals scale up to determine population and community level impacts. This project will quantifyhow individual insects and their populations respond to nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and exploremechanistic pathways for these impacts.The student will gain an understanding of how to lead novel 'frontier' science alongside aninterdisciplinary team and a range of stakeholders to generate impact. Specifically, they will gainexpertise in chemical ecology and evaluating ecological safe limits of pollutants, experimental design,insect rearing, plant-insect interactions, statistical data analysis, and use of air pollution models.