PLEASE NOTE: Application deadline date 08 Jan 2024. Applications are no longer being accepted for this project
Project Overview
Macroecological understanding of the factors regulating abyssal biodiversity underpins crucial work to preserve Earth’s largest biome from growing human impacts. This project will apply novel approaches in numerical community ecology to gain integrative understanding of how biotic and abiotic factors shape abyssal seabed communities at different spatial scales.
Project Description
Covering >60% of the surface of the planet, the abyssal seafloor is home to a wide array of highly specialised species, and is considered an important reservoir for biodiversity and source of ecosystem services. Understanding how well abyssal communities will withstand broad-scale disturbance from climate change and other human impacts like seabed mining in these vast regions is a priority for deep-sea research. In the Ocean BioGeosciences group at the National Oceanography Centre, we are developing exciting approaches to investigate what controls the assembly of benthic communities across abyssal regions, thereby testing well-established macroecology rules that have hardly been explored in the deep ocean, focusing on: resource availability (e.g. species-energy, latitudinal gradients), habitat (e.g., species-area, environmental filtering and dispersal limitation) and biotic interactions (e.g. species coexistence). This knowledge is essential to design conservation management plans that effectively preserve biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction.
The project will build on a large existing abyssal biodiversity dataset. The student will investigate large-scale variations in megafauna (animals >1cm) populations identified in seabed imagery collected across the Clarion Clipperton Zone Region (NE Pacific), an area targeted for polymetallic-nodule mining.
We seek an applicant with strong background in numerical ecology, spatial modelling and/or big-data analysis, either in R or Python. The student will develop novel and adapt existing macroecological approaches and associated computational routines to the study of patterns and processes (e.g. population distribution, habitat and interactions) in abyssal seabed communities.
There will be opportunities to join research expeditions at sea and direct collaboration with other deep-sea research institutes, industry, government (e.g. JNCC) and regulators.
The INSPIRE DTP programme provides comprehensive personal and professional development training alongside extensive opportunities for students to expand their multi-disciplinary outlook through interactions with a wide network of academic, research and industrial/policy partners. The student will be registered at the University of Southampton and hosted at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton.
The student will have the opportunity to receive training in seagoing sample collection from a research vessel. They will also receive training in the analysis of photographic and sample data and subsequent interpretation. This will include processing and taxonomic identification of megafaunal data from both images and specimens, data processing and analysis using a range of appropriate statistical techniques that are commonplace in image-based numerical ecology and deep-sea biological research. The student will have the opportunity to learn how to translate and relate the outcomes of the project from a regulatory perspective, by collaborating with Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC, official adviser to UK Government on Nature Conservation) in aspects related to policy and conservation management. There will be opportunities to present scientific findings at a range of relevant scientific and policy forums.
Simon-Lledó, E., Copley, J., Jones, D.O.B. et al. Carbonate compensation depth drives abyssal biogeography in the northeast Pacific. Nature Ecology & Evolution, doi:10.1038/s41559-023-02122-9 (2023)
Ovaskainen, O. et al. How to make more out of community data? A conceptual framework and its implementation as models and software. Ecology Letters 20, 561-576, doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.12757 (2017).
Levin, L. A., Jones, D.O.B, et al. Climate change considerations are fundamental to management of deep-sea resource extraction. Global Change Biology 26, 4664-4678, doi:10.1111/gcb.15223 (2020).
