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The Durrell Trust for Conservation Biology
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CV
PhD research entitled "Climate change, elevational range and extinction risk in birds" Supervisors: Dr Peter Bennett
This project will investigate avian species assemblages of the richest mountain ranges for avian diversity, including: the Andes (2139 species), Western Great Rift Valley (936 species), Eastern Great Rift Valley (902 species), Himalayas (878 species) and the Guyana highlands (877 species). Three main questions will be addressed:
Outputs obtained from this PhD will contribute to filling in current gaps of understanding and knowledge regarding the origin and maintenance of diversity, the potential impacts of environmental change, and the prioritisation of areas for conservation within montane systems.
Funding University of Kent Postgraduate Research Scholarship
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Recent global studies have shown that major mountain chains within the tropics are the richest areas for avian biodiversity. However, these regions are poorly understood, due primarily to a lack of studies specifically focusing on mountain systems. To date, scientists possess little understanding of the evolutionary and ecological factors that promote hotspots of avian diversity associated with altitudinal variation. Furthermore, climate change and its implications for the vulnerability of montane bird species to extinction risk are next to unknown.
In general, montane species seem particularly sensitive to climate change and more likely to be at risk of extinction because of it. For example, warming temperatures have been show to increasingly push a number of montane species to higher elevations, reducing their range size, sometimes entirely. In addition, avian conservation efforts and protected area designation have tended to focus on lowland regions of high deforestation such as the Amazon basin. However, many mountain biodiversity hotspots are under increasing threat from human activities including settlement sprawl and agricultural conversion of natural habitat. 
To answer these questions, morphological, life history, ecological and phylogenetic data will be collated for montane bird species assemblages on a global scale. To achieve this, existing global avian databases will be exploited, and new data collated from museum visits and extensive literature searches. Modern comparative methods that control for both spatial and phylogenetic non-independence of taxa will be undertaken. Three dimensional spatial GIS modelling of breeding range sizes will be conducted to investigate the influence of topography and elevational range on species richness. Particular emphasis will be placed on the importance of environmental variation underlying each mountain hotspot quantified by satellite imagery and GIS layers, including: latitude, climate, geological features, habitat heterogeneity and productivity, length of snow cover, human population density and land use.