PhD students (co-supervised with Hans Lambers) Start date: April 2011 Title: to be announced South-west Western Australia in common with other, ancient Gondwanan regions such as the Cape Floristic Region, are very biodiverse despite the soils being extremely nutrient-limited. Specialised root physiologies and morphologies are one adaptation to conditions, mycorrhizal associations another, and whilst some communities show dominance by plants with a single type of adaptation (for example, cluster roots), often plants with a range of strategies coexist side-by-side. How do such distinct strategies coexist? My PhD research will explore this question, which will advance our understanding of the fundamental factors that maintain biodiversity in nutrient-poor systems.  (co-supervised with Richard Hobbs and Pieter Poot) Start date: August 2007 Title: Effects of urbanization on the functional structure of remnant plant communities Urbanization is a global change driver and a major threat to biodiversity. Although it is fairly well known how urbanization affects the diversity and distribution of species along urban gradients, its effect on the communities’ functional structure remains largely unknown. Adopting a plant functional trait approach, and 30 remnant Banksia woodlands scattered across the Perth Metropolitan Area as a case study, I address the following questions a) What are the key environmental filters, and cross-scale interactions between them, driving remnant plant communities in urban landscapes? Are there any filter thresholds leading to major alterations on the plant community? b) How is the community functional structure affected by those urban environmental filters? Are there combinations of functional traits being particularly favored or disfavored in intensifying urban environments? c) Do invasive species have the ability to displace specific combinations of functional traits, or is their entrance in the ecosystem mostly additive? Undergraduate students (co-supervised with Hans Lambers and Stuart Pearse) Start date: June 2011 Title: Nutrient limitation and long-term soil development: a bioassay experiment Walker and Syers (1976; Geoderma) proposed a model of long-term soil development where nitrogen (N) is limiting on young, poorly developed soils, phosphorus (P) is limiting on old, weathered soils, and N + P are co-limiting on intermediate-aged soils. In this project, we test this soil development model along a sand dune chronosequence in Western Australia. We evaluate the type of nutrient limitation in dune systems of increasing age (from very young to well over 1,000,000 years old), using a nutrient limitation bioassay experiment. |