Research Programme

Research at the NERC Centre for Population Biology is divided into three research themes and a description of the areas covered is given below. All CPB publications can be found here.

Theme 1 - Biodiversity and ecosystem function in a changing environment

Overall goal: To assess the direct and indirect effects of environmental change on ecosystem processes and functions, including the maintenance of diversity and the structure of communities.

Sub-theme 1: The relationship between community structure and ecosystem function

Theoretical and empirical projects projects, ranging from single trophic level diversity effects on nutrient cycling, to the structural properties of multi-trophic food webs in agro-ecosystem services, to provide information to better understand the relationship between community structure and ecosystem functions.

Sub Theme 2: The effects of environmental change on biodiversity and community structure

Environmental change from climate change, nitrogen deposition and agricultural management can all effect ecological communities and ecosystem function; our studies of community structure include experimental microcosms of varying scale, field projects, theory and the analysis of long term ecological datasets.

Sub theme 3: The role of interspecific interactions in determinging community structure and resilience

Using theory, experiments and field data, we aim to disentangle the roles played by interspecific interactions in the structure and resilience of communities.  We study a range of systems from time series food web data to experiments on the evolution of interactions in microcosm communities.

Theme 2 - Patterns and Processes in Diversity and Distributions

Overall goal: To link biodiversity patterns and processes to predict biodiversity across scales of both space and time.

Sub theme 1: The role of phylogenetic and spatial processes in determining the structure and composition of assemblages.

Using global and regional datasets, we investigate the phylogenetic and phenotypic structure of ecological communities and assemblages, and the evolution of and biogeography of functional groups of organisims. We explore human-driven changes in the geographic patterns of richness and the composition of assemblages.

Sub theme 2: The identification of drivers of population demography and distributions

New methods to link evolutionary processes to ecological dynamics in wild populations allow us to investigate comparative evolutionary demography using long-term time series of marked individuals.  In particular our focus is on climatic drivers affecting recruitment and survival rates in age-structured populations, and the impact of anthropogenic change on species distribtutions.

Sub theme 3: The drivers of global diversity

We aim to disentangle large scale determinants of the richness and structure of assemblages at global scale.  We use environemental drivers, contemporary range maps and phylogenies to identify biotic and abiotic barriers and features that promote diversification.

Theme 3 - Ecology and Evolution of Diseases and Disease Vectors

 Overall goal: To understand the ecological and evolutionary processes underpinning disease and to develop strategies for disease managment

Sub theme 1: Evolutionary biology of host-parasite interactions

Theoretical and experimental studies to uncover the evolution of host-parasite interactions, with a focus on increasing our understanding of the evolution and maintenance of virulence , tolerance and resistance.

Sub theme 2: Genetic and biological control of disease vectors

Our work on model systems, especially malaria, identifies genetic interactions and t he population dynamics of vectors, with a view to developing novel control strategies.