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

该项目旨在解决当今世界最大的环境挑战之一，即如何确保受新烟碱影响的土壤生态系统持续提供生态系统服务。这项跨学科研究将涉及实地监测和实验室方法方面的培训，并将重点关注与新烟碱污染土壤相互作用的三种可能最受影响的物种，即土壤无脊椎动物、独居蜜蜂和刺猬。可耕地作物的种植，如油菜，越来越依赖于一系列新烟碱类化合物的种子包衣来控制害虫。它们的使用被认为严重影响了世界各地的传粉媒介，导致它们在欧洲和英国被禁止使用。新烟碱类杀虫剂对一系列生物群的长期影响尚不清楚，但很可能包括整个营养水平的级联影响（即人为诱发的营养级联）。博士学位的第一年将侧重于环境和土壤科学研究方面的正式研究培训。作为研究实验设计的一部分，学生还将对英国耕地系统进行生态系统服务制图评估。在二年级，学生将进行实地试验，以评估新烟碱类杀虫剂在不同土壤条件下的影响。第三年将量化三种目标物种的营养影响及其与不同历史使用模式和田间残留浓度的关系。博士学位将被写成科学论文，以最大限度地提高培训经验。该奖学金将由班戈大学（Paul Cross博士、Matt Hayward博士和Davey Jones教授）和CEH （Richard Pywell）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).