It’s been an exciting time recently – a few PhDs starting, a few others finishing (with two in and two out in the space of a week!). Love it!
Angela Bartlett, Stefanie Kaupa and Harry Shepherd recently crossed the starting line.
Angela is investigating the impact of rates of introduction, and introduction bias, on the richness and composition of alien plant and vertebrate species assemblages. She is supervised my Tim Blackburn (UCL) and me.
Stefanie is researching the impacts of agricultural land abandonment and associated plant invasions on hydrology in the mountain environments of Nepal and Colombia. She is supervised by Mark Mulligan (KCL) and me.
Harry is examining the potential for plant-soil interaction to enhance ecosystem restoration. He is supervised by Bjorn Robroek (Southampton) and me.
Angela and Stefanie started at King’s in March, both funded by the London NERC DTP. Harry started at Southampton in October, funded by the NERC SPITFIRE DTP.
And across the finishing line (cue fanfare, cartwheels, balloons) are Saras Windecker and Esti Palma – looking suitably triumphant below.
Esti produced a stellar body of work on the opportunities and limitations of trait-based invasiveness research.
Saras expertly examined the impact of vegetation communities on carbon sequestration in freshwater wetlands.
Both were at the University of Melbourne, supervised by Peter Vesk and me (+ Peter Macreadie in the case of Saras). Watch this space for forthcoming publications. They’ll be crackers!
Biggest congratulations to Esti and Saras – such a massive achievement to submit a PhD thesis!! woo woo!!
Ecological Change 