People-biodiversity interactions: is the fabric of life unravelling?

• Supervisors: Dr Samuel Pironon (Queen Mary University of London; Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew)
• Co-supervisor(s): Prof Kathy Willis (Oxford University), Dr Tom Fayle (Queen Mary University of London), Dr Marybel Soto Gomez (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew)
• Studentship Funding:
  • Name: New Talent Research Enabling Scheme
  • Funder: Faculty of Science and Engineering - School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences (SBBS) at QMUL
• Application Deadline: 23:59PM on 30th April 2025
• Expected Start Date: 15^th Sept 2025 (Sept 2025 Entry)

Download this document for further details, eligibility criteria and how to apply. [PDF 144KB]

Project Overview

Applications are open for a 3-year funded PhD Studentship in the School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences (SBBS) at Queen Mary University of London.

Biodiversity sustains human life. Tens of thousands of species are known to provide material and non-material benefits to people globally, including food, medicine, and energy (1, 2). This intricate relationship between people and biodiversity constitutes an essential weave to the “fabric of life” – a concept proposed recently by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) to refer to the whole of the living world (3). Given the dramatically increasing impact of human activities on nature and associated decline of life on Earth (4), the people-biodiversity weave may be fraying, posing the urgent need for a better understanding of its structure, function, and durability.

This PhD project will analyse hundreds of thousands of reports of animal and plant uses collected across the world throughout history to reconstruct the people-biodiversity weave as an interaction network between species and the benefits they provide to humans (e.g., food, medicine, fuel) (5). The student will estimate species’ vulnerability to global change (e.g., land use and climate change, overexploitation) using the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List and species distribution modelling (e.g., 2, 6, 7, 8). This will then allow the assessment of the robustness of the people-biodiversity interaction network and humanity’s potential resilience to the biodiversity crisis (e.g., 5, 9). Critically, the network approach will allow the prediction of cascading impacts of species extinctions through the people-biodiversity weave. This project will enable the identification of priority species and regions for the preservation and restoration of biodiversity and its contributions to people across the world (10, 11, 12).

Research Environment

Find out more about the School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences on our website.

Entry Requirements & Criteria

We are looking for candidates to have or expecting to receive a first or upper-second class honours degree and a Master’s degree in an area relevant to the project such as conservation biology, macroecology, computational ecology, global change biology, biodiversity, nature’s contributions to people. Candidates must also have experience conducting research in a laboratory environment.

Knowledge of R programming, statistics, data collection, analysis and visualization, interaction networks, species distribution modelling, spatial analyses would be highly advantageous but are not required.

Find out more about our entry requirements here.

Funding

The studentship is funded by Queen Mary University of London (QMUL). It will cover home tuition fees, and provide an annual tax-free maintenance allowance for 3 years at the UKRI rate (£21,237 in 2024/25). 

Please find out more about funding and eligibility via: Samuel Pironon_QMUL SE Studentship Details [PDF 144KB]

Any further queries can be sent to sbbs-pgadmissions@qmul.ac.uk 

How to Apply 

Formal applications must be submitted through our online form by the stated deadline for consideration. A research proposal is not required and your personal statement should include:

• Previous experience relevant to this project
• Your motivations for pursuing this position
• Your career aspirations
• Any further information you think is relevant to the application

Find out more about our application process on our SBBS website.

Further details can be downloaded here: Samuel Pironon_QMUL SE Studentship Details [PDF 144KB]

Apply Online

References

1. IPBES, Summary for policymakers of the sustainable use of wild species assessment (Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, Bonn, Germany, 2022)
2. Pironon S et al., The global distribution of plants used by humans. Science383, 293–298 (2024)
3. Díaz S, A fabric of life view of the world. Science 375, 6586 (2022)
4. Díaz S et al., Pervasive human-driven decline of life on Earth points to the need for transformative change. Science366, eaax3100 (2019)
5. Cámara-Leret R, Fortuna MA, Bascompte J, Indigenous knowledge networks in the face of global change.  Natl. Acad. Sci., 116(20), 9913–9918 (2019)
6. Soto Gomez M et al., Genome size is positively correlated with extinction risk in herbaceous angiosperms. New Phytologist, 243(6), 2470-2485 (2024)
7. Marsh SME et al., Prevalence of sustainable and unsustainable use of wild species inferred from the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.  Biol.36, e13844 (2022)
8. Pironon S et al., Potential adaptive strategies for 29 Sub-Saharan crops under future climate change. Nature Climate Change, 9, 758-763 (2019)
9. Bascompte J et al., Mutualistic interactions reshuffle the effects of climate change on plants across the tree of life. Science Advances, 5(5), eaav2539 (2019)
10. Cantwell-Jones A et al., Global plant diversity as a reservoir of micronutrients for humanity. Nature Plants, 8, 225-232 (2022)
11. Timberlake T et al., A network approach for managing ecosystem services and improving food and nutrition security on smallholder farms. People and Nature, 4, 563-575 (2022)
12. Pironon S & Soto Gomez M, Plant agrodiversity to the rescue. Nature Climate Change, 11(1), 6-8 (2020)