Author: Lucy Moore Fuller

During my undergraduate degree, I was involved in a research project in Kenya, investigating the impact of nutrient poor soil on resource allocation to herbivory defence. This is where I became interested in the importance of soil in savanna ecosystems, ultimately leading to my pursuing of a PhD in savanna soil carbon.

Savannas occupy 20% of the Earth’s land surface and are critical for the livelihoods and wellbeing of over 1 billion people. Soils underpin the delivery and sustainability of the form and function of these environments. As important reservoirs of global biodiversity and carbon, savanna soils are under increasing pressure from human activity and over-exploitation. My research focusses on improving understanding of the individual and interactive effects of grazing, fire and climate change on savanna soil biology and resilience to future disturbance. Together these drivers have the capacity to significantly alter savanna biodiversity and biogeochemical function with implications for dependent human welfare and happiness.

I’m really looking forward to being a Team Communicator for Challenge 4 – How can we mitigate climate change through soil carbon management?

Twitter:  @maryjhodgson

Hi I’m Madi. I am a 1^st year PhD student at the University of Cambridge. My research focuses on understanding the mechanism behind coral calcification, so that we can both improve our understanding of past ocean conditions through paleo-proxies, and our estimates of how corals will fair in the future. My research career so far has been quite varied. I have also studied how subduction zones have changed since the break-up of Pangea, and how enhanced slab flux may have contributed to mantle dynamics. For my honours thesis at the University of Sydney, I used Landscape Evolution Modeling to explore sediment fates across a tropical continental margin, and the role of reef platforms over glacial-inter-glacial cycles. There are just too many interesting things to learn about. I hope that wherever my focus moves, it will be contributing to keeping the natural world as beautiful and brilliant as it already is.

For more details on my work, feel free to visit my ResearchGate profile.

Conceptual figure generated for the following publication: East, M., Müller, R.D., Williams, S., Zahirovic, S. and Heine, C., 2020. Subduction history reveals Cretaceous slab superflux as a possible cause for the mid-Cretaceous plume pulse and superswell events. Gondwana Research, 79, pp.125-139.

Mairenn is part of the Spottiswoode group in Zoology at the University of Cambridge, researching evolution in avian brood parasites – birds that lay their eggs in the nests of other birds (https://www.africancuckoos.com/our-work/). She completed a Master’s degree with the same group last year, working on the interaction between fork-tailed drongos and African cuckoos in Zambia. Before this, Mairenn worked on various ecology projects, including the impact of parasitic plants on invasive Oxalis, the function of buccal oscillations in túngara frogs, and interactions between pollen beetles and rock roses. She was also an intern with the Insect Ecology group in Cambridge, examining invertebrate diversity across ancient and recently planted woodland. In her final year undergraduate project, she investigated behavioural responses to kleptoparasitism risk in sticklebacks, supervised by Professor Nick Davies. Across these diverse taxa, interactions between individuals and species emerged as a central research interest.

She currently works as a co-director of content at Climate Science (https://climatescience.org/), a charity empowering people to learn about solutions to the climate crisis. Alongside this, she supervises undergraduate students in conservation science and evolution.

DTP: ARIES

Profile: Ms Kyriaki M. Lekakou | Aries (aries-dtp.ac.uk)

I am a forest ecologist interested in determining the impacts of ongoing global climate change on forest distribution, structure and function. I am in my 3^rd year of my PhD at the University of Stirling funded by NERC IAPETUS. My research focuses on subtropical montane forests in Taiwan, where I am investigating changes from the ecosystem to the species level using national forest inventory data, field surveys and lab based growth experiments. As global environmental changes continue, this information will feed into a broader understanding of impacts, to allow us to prepare for the implications of such changes for biodiversity, ecosystem function and dependent human populations.

Education: MRes. (Distinction) Biodiversity and Conservation (2016-2017; University of Leeds) BSc. (hons; 1st class) Conservation Biology (2012-2016; University of Aberdeen)

Publications: O’Sullivan KSW, Ruiz-Benito P, Chen J & Jump AS (2021) Onward but not always upward: individualistic elevational shifts of tree species in subtropical montane forests. Ecography, 44 (1), pp. 112-123. https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.05334

Links

Twitter: https://twitter.com/kirsten_os

Linkedin: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/kirsten-o-sullivan-593185120

University page:  https://www.stir.ac.uk/people/1017477#aboutme