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School of Life Sciences Studentship (Biology) (2025)

What you get

This School-funded position covers ºìÐÓÊÓƵ (UK) tuition fees and a stipend at standard UKRI rates for 3.5 years. Applicants with overseas fee status need to provide evidence of how they will fund the difference between ºìÐÓÊÓƵ and International tuition fees (approx. £20k per year). 

Type of award

Postgraduate Research

PhD project

Project 1

Course: Biology PhD : ºìÐÓÊÓƵ

Supervisors: Dr Beth Nicholls & Dr Sean Stankowski

Contact: e.nicholls@sussex.ac.uk

Project Title: How does pollinator decision-making affect variation in plant fitness?

Project Description:

Much of our understanding of plant-pollinator interactions has focussed on how the species-level foraging preferences of insects shape gene flow in plant populations. But how do the foraging decisions of individual insects, influenced by their unique experiences, such as local flower availability, contribute to variation in the fitness of individual plants within a population?

To answer this question, you will work with two model systems: the common snapdragon (Antirrhinum majus) and its pollinator, the bumblebee (Bombus terrestris). The project builds on a long-term field study of a hybridisation zone in the Spanish Pyrenees, where the phenological traits and genealogy of every individual plant has been recorded over the past ten years, allowing estimations of fitness variation. Plants vary in petal colour across the hybrid zone, from the predominantly yellow A.m.striatum to the magenta A.m.pseudomajus. While the molecular underpinnings are well understood, this project will provide much needed insight into how bumblebee foraging decisions contribute to the maintenance of each subspecies. Given that the morphology of snapdragons requires bumblebees to invest effort to open the flowers to access nectar, intermediate colour morphs may be selected against because the flower patterns they exhibit are less effective at guiding bees to the opening. An alternative, not mutually exclusive hypothesis is that bees may choose to forage only from the most common colour morph in an area. 

Supervised by Dr Beth Nicholls, an expert in bumblebee cognition and Dr Sean Stankowski, an expert in ecological genetics, the project will draw on the latest techniques in animal behaviour and molecular ecology, and through a combination of field and laboratory studies, will disentangle these hypotheses, substantially improving understanding of how individual decision-making in insects shapes the delivery of pollination, impacting our understanding of speciation as well as being applicable to the fields of agro-ecology and conservation.

 

Project 2

Course: Biology PhD : ºìÐÓÊÓƵ

Supervisors: Prof William Hughes & Dr Valentina Scarponi

Contact: william.hughes@sussex.ac.uk 

Project Title: Healthy Seas: measuring anthropogenic impacts on the marine biodiversity of Sussex

Project Description:

There is growing recognition of the ecological and economic importance of marine ecosystems, both locally and globally, and their vulnerability in the face of anthropogenic pressures. Many areas have been substantially impacted by human activities, but we lack much of the basic information needed to manage them effectively, particularly comparable data of marine biodiversity before and after human impacts.

This exciting project will focus on the Sussex inshore region, an area that has been dramatically altered by human activities, including destructive trawling and the loss of previously abundant kelp beds. Present day trawling bans in some parts of the region and the construction of wind farms create a unique opportunity to obtain comparable before-and-after data and directly measure the impact of human activities on marine biodiversity. This project will do this using the latest environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding methods and Baited Remote Underwater Video (BRUV) surveys to examine the impacts of trawling and wind farms on marine biodiversity in Sussex. The project will also develop and validate quantitative PCR (qPCR) of eDNA for taxa that are of special conservation interest, and combine eDNA analysis with a focal citizen science approach to investigate the occurrence and population dynamics of specific taxa of conservation interest, including kelp, invasive Japanese wireweed, and charismatic vertebrates such as tope, angel sharks and bluefin tuna.

The student will carry out their work as part of the Sussex Bay collaborative network, providing excellent opportunities for the student to engage with a diversity of academic and non-academic partners, and the broader stakeholder community. The results will help inform fisheries, conservation and wind farm construction policies, including the restoration of biodiversity and marine ecosystem services, and contribute to achieving national, European and UN sustainable development goals.

 

Project 3

Course: Biology PhD : ºìÐÓÊÓƵ

Supervisors: Prof Pierre Nouvellet & Dr Maria Clara Castellanos

Contact: pierre.nouvellet@sussex.ac.uk

Project Title: Eco-Epidemiology of Dutch Elm Disease and Ash Dieback in Sussex

Project Description:

Dutch Elm Disease (DED) and Ash Dieback are two significant tree diseases that have severely impacted their populations and the biodiversity and ecological balance of urban and rural landscapes across Europe.  

This project aims to quantitatively evaluate the impact of current management strategies and develop robust epidemiological models to understand and mitigate these fungal diseases within Sussex.

 The project’s objectives are to:

• Conduct comprehensive surveys to map the distribution and severity of DED and Ash Dieback in Sussex.
• Develop and refine epidemiological models to predict the spread and impact of DED and Ash Dieback, incorporating factors such as climate, tree density, and management practices.
• Evaluate the ecological consequences of DED and Ash Dieback on local biodiversity, focusing on the habitats provided by ash woodlands, urban elms, and mature and veteran trees of both species, and their role in supporting ecological diversity.
• Quantitatively assess the direct impact of DED and Ash Dieback on elm and ash trees, and the indirect impact on biodiversity. This includes evaluating the effectiveness of current management strategies such as biological control methods, resistant tree planting, and other interventions on disease prevalence and tree health.

By integrating advanced modelling techniques with a deeper understanding of the epidemiological and ecological dynamics, this project will provide evidence-based and actionable management recommendations for optimising disease management strategies.

The project will be led by Prof. Pierre Nouvellet and Dr. Maria Clara Castellanos from the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the ºìÐÓÊÓƵ, in collaboration with Brighton and Hove City Council. Sussex, including Brighton and Hove, is an ideal location for this project due to its unique urban and rural forests, which include a significant density of ash in woodland and the National Elm Collection in the city.

Both provide critical habitats for local biodiversity. Additionally, the proactive environmental policies and strong community engagement will ensure meaningful involvement of stakeholders with the project.

 Project 4

Course: Biology PhD : ºìÐÓÊÓƵ

Supervisors: Dr Wiebke Schuett & Prof Paul Graham

Contact: w.schuett@sussex.ac.uk

Project Title: What’s your move? Spatial cognition of different personality types in an insect

Project Description:

Rationale: Consistent behavioural differences among individuals (“animal personality” differences) are ubiquitous and can have vast ecological and evolutionary consequences. Recently emerging evidence suggests that microhabitat use might be personality-dependent which may have extensive implications for ecological interactions but these links have been barely studied, and it is unclear whether these behavioural differences reflect different underlying cognitive mechanisms.

Project: In this multidisciplinary, novel project we combine approaches from research fields of ecology and neuroethology to shed light into personality-dependent spatial cognition and habitat use. We will address the following questions: (1) Do individuals of different personality types consistently differ in their habitat use? (2) Are those differences in spatial use explained by perceptual differences? (3) Do individuals of different personality types vary in spatial-cognition style and decision-making strategies? (4) What are the consequences of differential habitat use for the distribution of personality types in the environment?

 Approaches: We will study a specialist woodland ground beetle with low dispersal power as the model system and use a combination of field and laboratory experiments to address our questions. These will, for example, include enclosure experiments in the field, field tracking of individuals using telemetry and/or RFID reader systems, behavioural essays, environmental surveys, trackball experiments including virtual realities in the lab and choice experiments in large scale lab-controlled multisensory environments.

Impact: This multidisciplinary project will provide novel insights into key questions in animal behaviour, neuroscience and ecology. It provides a more holistic understanding of consequences of intraspecific variation on spatial cognition in heterogenous environments with knowledge gain not only for the fundamental sciences but also consequences for predicting species responses to environmental change.

Eligibility

Candidates should have or expect to obtain a minimum 2:1 undergraduate degree. An MSc degree will be advantageous. You may also be considered for the position if you have other professional qualifications or experience of equivalent standing. 

Candidates for whom English is not their first language will require an IELTS score of 6.5 overall or equivalent proficiency - English language requirements 

Applications are particularly welcomed from candidates with protected characteristics – e.g., from Black and other ethnic minorities who are under-represented in postgraduate research at our institution. 

Deadline

25 June 2025 23:45

How to apply

Please submit a formal application via the Postgraduate application system attaching a CV, degree transcripts and certificates, and two academic referees. A research proposal is not required. Instead, please upload a personal statement describing your skills and experience, motivation for Doctoral Research, future goals, and why you are applying to this project. 

On the application system, please select ‘funding obtained’ and complete the text boxes with “as stated in the advert”. Please state the supervisor’s name where required. 

If you apply to more than one project in the same course, please upload a personal statement for each project and list each supervisor you are applying to.

Sponsors

 In the School of Life Sciences we strive to understand the mechanisms that drive biological and chemical processes and to develop innovative and diverse approaches to enhance human health, technology and the environment. We undertake multidisciplinary research, teaching and engagement across a wide range of subjects, from Chemistry through Cellular and Molecular Biosciences to Conservation Biology. 

The School comprises five Departments: Biochemistry & Biomedicine, Genome Damage and Stability Centre, Neuroscience, Ecology & Evolution and Chemistry. We also house the Sussex Drug Discovery Centre which works to deliver the bench-to-bedside translation of our discoveries. The breadth and depth of our cutting-edge research and innovative teaching practice is delivered by a diverse community who work across boundaries to deliver excellence, engage with real world problems and produce impact. 

We pride ourselves on our world-leading research and have a strong research economy, with approximately 50% of our income stemming from research and an active grant portfolio of over £50 million. We host or form part of three University Centres of Excellence: the Genome Damage and Stability Centre, Sussex Neuroscience and Sussex Sustainability Research Programme. In the 2021 Research Excellence Framework, 90.6 % of our Biological Sciences outputs and 84.8% of our Chemistry outputs were rated as world-leading or internationally excellent. We are proud that in both areas, 100% of our Impact cases were rated as world-leading or internationally excellent.

The School is committed to the University’s core values of kindness, integrity, inclusion, collaboration and courage. We believe that equality, diversity and inclusion is everyone’s responsibility and aim to provide a friendly and supportive environment for all who work, study and visit the School of Life Sciences. In recognition of our work in gender equality we are proud to hold an  Silver Award.

Contact us

For queries about the application process, please see the online application guide or contact Emma Chorley: lifesci-rec@sussex.ac.uk 

For enquiries about the project, please contact the supervisor.