Personal Statement
I am an ecologist with broad interests in community ecology, conservation and evolutionary biology. My main research interests lie in understanding how plants and associated soil biota will respond to anthropogenic environmental change. In particular, I want to understand whether adaptive responses (species sorting, evolution and phenotypic plasticity) will be sufficient to buffer species and communities against the effects of anticipated climatic change, and what the ecological consequences of such adaptation will be. Current projects in my lab make extensive use of long-term (> 30 yr) climate manipulations applied to a calcareous grassland at the Buxton Climate Change Impacts Lab (BCCIL; https://buxtonclimatescience.wordpress.com). These projects span and integrate levels of biological organisation, and responses, from the gene to the ecosystem. My research also uses meta-analysis to understand the impacts of invasive taxa on native species and ecosystems, and for understanding genetic problems faced by rare and threatened taxa (conservation genetics).