Trophic cascades in a changing environment:

elevated CO2 and multi-trophic interactions

Scott Johnson Rosie Hails & Adam Vanbergen Hefin Jones

Supervisors

William Hentley

Gilles San Martin

My PhD

• Dealing with multiple supervisors• Experiments Challenges

– Elevated CO2 experiment– The drought experiment

• Opportunities• Future work - The thesis

Dealing with supervisors

Avoid this combination of supervisors

• Welsh

• A director of Science

• Alpha male

• At the other side of the world.

Dealing with supervisorsManaging their time

Dealing with supervisors

One supervisor giveth...

...the other taketh away

Challenges

• Elevated CO2 experiment

• A drought experiment

The Grodome

Lack of reliability resulted in years of neglect and under use.

Plant disease

Aphids that shouldn’t be there…and the wrong species

Ask for help!

• Contacted other institutions

• Found a solution

• Pestered the management

• Helped secure £60K

• Problem solved…

How about a drought experiment?

The drought-a-tron

“Everyone in Ecology knows each other, so don’t piss anyone off!”

Rosie Hails, 2013

Opportunities

Opportunities

The thesis

Procrastination

Search – ‘why procrastinators procrastinate’

Procrastination

Procrastination

Adam Vanbergen, Hefin Jones, Rosie Hails, Scott Johnson, Caroline Schultz, Scott McKenzie, Joe Rowland, Leah Cuthbertson, Louise Barwell, Rory O’Connor, Gary Powney, Tom August, Phil Martin, Helen Hicks, Sarah McCormack, Miles Nunn, Ned Hewit, Denise Pallet, Helen Roy, Helen Hesketh, Karsten Schonrogge, Phil White, Caroline Wills-Wright, Carolyn Mitchell, Lindsay McMenemy, Alison Dobson, Sheena Lamond, Jim McNicol, Simon Leather, Richard Harrington, Adam Butler, Elma Lahive, Mum, Dan Hentley, Emily Shaw, Sarah Hulmes, Lucy Hulmes, Julia Ferrari, Ali Karley, Ruth Wade, Andrew Beckerman, Sarah Facey, Chris Lesley, Timo Blake, Ian Parker, Alan Bloomfield, Alan Warwick, Geoff Wicks, Jim Jones, Ron Stevenson, Melanie Brien, Rob Thomas, Mike Dunbar, Jason Baverstock, Keith Byrom, Morag McCracken, Emily Taylor, Shabbir Ahmed, Trish Saunders, Marc Botham, David Roy, Alex Stevenson, Chris van der Gast, Mark Jervis, Joanne Lello, Matt Dray, Don O’Bear, Tom Crowther, Steven Thomas, Catlin Pearson, James Ryalls, James Vafidis, Tiffany Aslam, Emma Sayer, Matt Heard

Acknowledgements