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

在世界其他地区，如热带地区，尽管迫切需要循证方法来指导环境管理，但可获得的分辨率数据要少得多。世界上大多数生物多样性都在这些地区，它们的土地使用变化率也最高。学生将分析这样的非洲热带数据集，包括，内插的存在-不存在数据，按物种平均或使用系统发育关系内插的性状数据。这将需要制定新的分析方法，将全球土地使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，通过在解析良好的数据集上使用相同的简化方法来量化不确定性，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性状的代理的适用性，后者可能不存在于其他物种组。该项目将为建立一个更明确的方法框架铺平道路，以了解在缺乏数据的情况下土地使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方法，可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.