Andrew Bladon
ajb273@cam.ac.uk
Tel:
+44 (0)1223 336670
I studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge for my undergraduate degree, and graduated in 2011 having specialised in Zoology. I spent four months volunteering for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) doing data entry and running statistical analyses for a project on Higher Level Stewardship farms. I then worked for them as a research assistant on the hawfinch project, before starting my PhD in October 2012.
Research Interests
I am interested in the ecological determinants of species distributions, and the consequences these may have for the conservation of range-restricted species. Ranges can be determined by a numerous factors, from inter-specific competition and prey species distribution, to boundaries of temperature or rainfall gradients. The latter effects can then occur via direct or indirect mechanisms. In animals, evidence of direct climatic limitation is not often reported, but where it does occur it could place species at the greatest risk from climate change in the short term.
I will be studying two species of endemic Ethiopian birds, the Ethiopian Bush-crow, Zavattariornis stresemanni, and the White-tailed Swallow, Hirundo megaensis, which occupy a small range (around 5,000km2) in southern Ethiopia. I am attempting to determine the causes of their range-restriction, of which there is evidence of a strong climatic effect.
My work will increase our understanding of the ecological determinates of species distributions, and provide a model species on which further work can be based. Better understanding of the ecologies of the bush-crow and swallow are also crucial, in order to allow local park management plans to best match their needs in the face of a changing environment around them.
My PhD is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) via a studentship to the Zoology Department in Cambridge, with the RSPB as a CASE partner. I am supervised by Rhys Green at Cambridge and Paul Donald at the RSPB.
