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PhD opportunities: Biodiversity

Compare 13 doctoral research opportunities connected with Biodiversity, including project summaries, funding and application deadlines.

Biodiversity

Waters rising again: The loss and reconnection of floodplains PhD

Cranfield University

About the Project This funded PhD studentship is an exciting opportunity to conduct new interdisciplinary research on floodplains. It will combine approaches from the natural and social sciences to investigate the factors that influence the loss and, more recently, reconnection of floodplains. The research findings will inform new policy and best practice for nature-based solutions and the ecological restoration of rivers and floodplains.

Location
Bedford, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
Deadline
4 November 2026
Funding
Competition Funded PhD Project (UK Students Only)

Biodiversity

Feeling the heat: understanding the impact of high temperatures on future tree functioning under elevated CO2

University of Birmingham

About the Project Photosynthesis is a process vital to plant growth and is highly sensitive to temperature (Crous et al. 2022). When CO 2 is high, plants close their leaf pores (stomata) to save water - but this traps heat and makes increases leaf temperatures (Fauset et al. 2019).

Location
Birmingham, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
Deadline
9 November 2026
Funding
Funded PhD Project (UK Students Only)

Biodiversity

Acoustic Indicators of Ecosystem Integrity: Developing Soundscape-Based Monitoring for West African Protected Areas

University of Salford

About the Project Biodiversity monitoring underpins effective protected area management and international conservation reporting, yet West African nations face persistent capacity constraints -insufficient funding, limited field personnel, and taxonomic expertise gaps - that prevent adequate ecosystem assessment.

Location
Manchester, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
Deadline
Year-round applications
Funding
Self-Funded PhD Students Only

Biodiversity

Bioinformatics analyses of microbial communities and their genetic contents to understand the transmission dynamics and selection of antimicrobial resistance

University of Reading

About the Project Project Overview Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) is one of the topics that we cannot ignore. Bacterial infections unsuccessfully treated due to AMR claim at least 700 000 lives per year worldwide and are projected to be associated with the deaths of 10 million people per year by 2050.

Location
Reading, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
Deadline
Year-round applications
Funding
Self-Funded PhD Students Only

Biodiversity

Domestication and environmental adaptation in livestock

Cardiff University

About the Project Project Description Livestock species have an incredible history, having been recently domesticated from wildlife species such as the aurochs, mouflon, wild buffalo etc, and since then having been changed by early and modern farmers to fulfil an economic role supporting human societies.

Location
Cardiff, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
Deadline
Year-round applications
Funding
Self-Funded PhD Students Only

Biodiversity

Evaluating the potential consequences of climate heating for Caspian seals and ecosystem services in the Caspian Sea

University of Leeds

About the Project Marine mammals are keystone species for marine ecosystems. Understanding how they could be impacted by climate heating is important for evaluating risks to marine biodiversity, ecosystem function and ecosystem services. The Caspian seal (Pusa caspica), is endemic to the Caspian Sea in Central Asia, the largest landlocked waterbody on the planet.

Location
Leeds, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
Deadline
Year-round applications
Funding
Self-Funded PhD Students Only

Biodiversity

How did species originate, evolve and go extinct across the vertebrate tree of life?

University of Reading

About the Project Project Overview: The tree of life underpins our understanding of all aspects of biodiversity past, present and future. Not only does it describe how species are related to each other, but it also documents the evolutionary history of life on Earth. The timings and spacing of branching events tell us when and how new lineages of species arose, and how clades diversified.

Location
Reading, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
Deadline
Year-round applications
Funding
Self-Funded PhD Students Only

Biodiversity

Modelling effects of microclimate variability on climate-induced ranges shifts in Madagascar

Kingston University

About the Project Anthropogenic climate change (ACC) is anticipated to significantly alter the future distribution of plant species in tropical regions. Predictions about these impacts are primarily based on species distribution models (SDMs) that use coarse-scale climate data. Recent studies have suggested that models relying on macroclimate variables can produce inaccurate predictions, overestimating or underestimating future range changes.

Location
London, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
Deadline
Year-round applications
Funding
Self-Funded PhD Students Only

Biodiversity

Self-funded PhD - The genomic basis of major evolutionary transitions

University of Bristol

About the Project Life on Earth has undergone major evolutionary transitions that reshaped its biology, including the emergence of multicellularity, adaptation to terrestrial environments, and parasitism. The genomic mechanisms driving these changes remain poorly understood. This project will analyze large-scale genomic datasets using methods such as comparative genomics and phylogenetic reconstruction to uncover the genetic basis of these evolutionary leaps.

Location
Bristol, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
Deadline
Year-round applications
Funding
Self-Funded PhD Students Only

Biodiversity

Sex Determination and the Extinction Vortex

University of Leicester

About the Project This PhD will investigate whether the risk of extinction in Hymenoptera is greater than most other insect species because of a synergistic interaction between extrinsically driven decline and an intrinsic factor, their mechanism of sex determination. Insects are essential to ecosystem function but are declining because of extrinsic, human-derived impacts on environments [1].

Location
Leicester, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
Deadline
Year-round applications
Funding
Self-Funded PhD Students Only

Biodiversity

The origin and diversification of Madagacar’s endemic rodent radiation

University of Salford

About the Project Madagascar supports a unique and diverse radiation of rodents, comprising ~30 described living and recently extinct species classified in the subfamily Nesomyinae. They represent one of four major extant terrestrial mammal radiations in Madagascar (together with tenrecs, lemurs, and Madgascan carnivorans), and collectively span a range of body sizes, diets and locomotor modes, from small tree-climbing species to rabbit-like hoppers.

Location
Manchester, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
Deadline
Year-round applications
Funding
Self-Funded PhD Students Only

Biodiversity

Trace evidence: Locard’s exchange principle using invertebrates

University of Reading

About the Project In most criminal or forensic investigations, much of the work focuses on the collection and assessment of biological traces of human origin. Invertebrates, particularly animal micro-parts (e.g., lepidopteran scales, insect exuviae, etc) and micro-invertebrates (e.g., tardigrades) are ubiquitous in the human environment. Samples lifted from a crime scene or from human clothes will very frequently contain micro-invertebrates. For Dr.

Location
Reading, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
Deadline
Year-round applications
Funding
Self-Funded PhD Students Only

Biodiversity

Understanding extinction risk in the Anthropocene

University of Reading

About the Project We live in a humanized world in which even the most remote areas have been affected by the actions of our species. Human impacts have caused a widespread loss of biodiversity, to the point that we have likely entered the sixth mass extinction event on Earth, the first primarily caused by humans.

Location
Reading, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
Deadline
Year-round applications
Funding
Self-Funded PhD Students Only