PhD: Ecological responses to environmental change: an experimental approach to the causes of extinction – past and future

This project applies experimental geobiology to Earth’s greatest ecological crisis in 66 million years. Anthropogenically-induced climate change poses unprecedented challenges from rising atmospheric CO2 and associated ocean acidification, global warming and marine oxygen depletion. Each of these is implicated in Earth’s past mass extinctions (wiping out up to 96% of species) and has potential to drive Earth’s next biotic crisis. Earth history is littered with climatic and ecological thresholds and warning signs, but we still do not know “what is the final push for mass extinction?” Examining this in the context of modern change will help us better define the warning indicators of the WWF Extinction Report and Living Planet Index, and reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as we seek to mitigate the impact of change.

This PhD project will evaluate the ecological impact of the aforementioned environmental stresses through laboratory experiments at scales from individual species to more complex marine invertebrate, and terrestrial ecosystems. Using Hull’s controlled temperature and atmospheric chambers and aquaria, the research will test ecological responses in a range of environments to changes in atmospheric CO2, pH, temperature and dissolved O2. The experimental data will permit predictions about Earth’s future that, unusually, are grounded in knowledge of ecosystem response to change in the deep past. This novel combination of palaeobiology, geology, experimental biology and geochemistry lends the broad appeal and potential of the research – the successful candidate should have a background in one of these fields.