Developing and Testing Tools to Determine the Protection Provided to Invertebrates by Agricultural Field Margins at Oxford Brookes University

Eligibility: Home UK/EU and International applicants

Bursary p.a.: Bursary equivalent to UKRI national minimum stipend plus fees (current 2023/24 bursary rate is £18,622)

University fees and bench fees: University fees and bench fees will be met by the University for the 3 years of the funded Studentship. Visa and associated costs are not funded. International applicants can visit https://www.brookes.ac.uk/students/isat/ for further information.

Closing date: 26 January 2024

Interviews: Tbc

Start date:  September 2024

Project Title: Developing and testing tools to determine the protection provided to invertebrates by agricultural field margins

Director of Studies: Dr Casper J. Breuker

Supervisors: Dr Melanie Gibbs (UKCEH), Stephen Short (UKCEH), Dr Alexander Robinson (UKCEH) 

Requirements: 

Entry requirements: Applicants should have a first or upper second-class honours degree from a Higher Education Institution in the UK or acceptable equivalent qualification. EU Applicants must have a valid IELTS Academic test certificate (or equivalent) with an overall minimum score of 6.5 to 7.0 and no score below 6.0 issued in the last 2 years by an approved test centre.

The studentship requires you to undertake the equivalent of up to 6 hrs of teaching per week on average, during semester time, and to include preparation and marking (but no more than 20 hrs per week), and to participate in a teaching skills course without further remuneration.

Project Description:

Key invertebrates that provide valuable ecosystem services such as pollination, pest control and decomposition are threatened by various forms of habitat degradation. Pesticide use in farmland is an additional direct driver of invertebrate diversity loss. This can hinder our ability to sustainably produce food for an ever-growing human population. Pesticide impact mitigation measures, like field margins, perform a dual role, providing breeding habitat for invertebrates and attenuating crop spray drift. Currently there is a lack of suitable methods to measure fine-scale variation in pesticide exposure levels in organisms in situ in the field, and no way to accurately assess the effectiveness of field margins in mitigating pesticide spray drift. This project aims to address this shortfall by developing a methodological toolkit to measure and elucidate impacts of pesticide spray drift on invertebrates in the field, enabling accurate on-the-ground testing of conservation interventions.

This multidisciplinary research project spans several research themes and utilises research expertise from across two institutions: the Centre for Functional Genomics at Oxford Brookes University (CFG, OBU) and the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH). Integrating evolutionary ecology, field- and labwork, molecular invertebrate ecotoxicology, and bioinformatics (including comparative genomics and transcriptomics, DNA barcoding and molecular taxonomy) this project will result in a student with a diverse skill set that can be used to address practical conservation ecology field-based problems. Furthermore, the student will receive postgraduate skills training and gain mentoring for their career development. 

Contact: cbreuker@brookes.ac.uk

How to apply: Applicants should visit the project webpage to download instructions on how to submit an online application, under ‘How to apply’ button on the Oxford Brookes vacancy page. You will be routed to this when you click on the above “Apply” button. Enquiries about the application process can be sent to: hls-applications@brookes.ac.uk

Advertised competitively alongside our current Nigel Groome PhD studentship advertisements for Biological and Medical Sciences. Part time MPhil/PhD study will be exceptionally considered (Home Fee status applicants only).