Stef Benstead
sjb266@cam.ac.uk
Tel:
+44 (0)1223 336670
I started my PhD in 2010, immediately after completing my undergraduate degree in the Zoology Department at the University of Cambridge. My PhD is funded by a Miriam Rothschild Studentship and I am supervised by Rhys Green.
Research Interests
I am interested in how climate change and habitat fragmentation interact to affect species range distributions. Effective conservation requires an understanding of how species will respond to climate change, but this is complicated by numerous other factors including habitat loss. Predictions of how distributions will change under global warming have largely been based on correlations between climate variables and current distribution, ignoring the effects of these other factors. Consequently there is a need for models to be developed that combine these other factors with the basic climate envelope model to predict future species distributions.
I am focusing on the Cetti’s Warbler and Dartford Warbler to study how range expansion in the UK is limited by habitat loss, degradation and fragmentation. I will be using historical population, habitat and climate data to create models that will allow me to explain past changes in distribution and predict how both of these birds will respond to future changes in climate and habitat. This should be of interest to conservation agencies that want to plan how best to conserve and manage these species in the UK.
