Shuyu Deng

PhD topic title: Global Biodiversity - changing patterns in the Anthropocene

PhD supervisor(s): Professor Chris Thomas and Dr Colin Beale

Biography and research

I completed my Master's degree at the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, where I have looked into the flagship species Giant Panda and the habitat change, biodiversity and ecosystem function change associated with conservation strategies. During the pandemic, I started my PhD in LCAB and the department of Biology at the University of York, looking at a broader spatial and temporal scale and exploring how biodiversity changes by human modifications in this rapidly changing world.

My PhD is on changing species diversity (alpha and beta) through time, using the existing literature, databases and remote sensing data for species and land-use change analyses. I am interested in the effect of human land-use transformations on species richness and compositional change in different parts of the world, especially their relationships with the changing productivity patterns, to answer the question of how humans have reshaped the world.

Funder

• China Scholarship Council
• The Leverhulme Trust