Gill research group
insect ecology & evolution
PhD - Aoife Cantwell-Jones
aoife.cantwell-jones15(at)imperial.ac.uk
Link to my Imperial College webpage
Publications
Cantwell‐Jones A, Larson K, Ward A, Bates OK, Cox T, Gibbons C, Richardson R, Al‐Hayali AMR, Svedin J, Aronsson M, Brannlund F, Tylianakis JM, Johansson J & Gill RJ (2023). Mapping trait versus species turnover reveals spatiotemporal variation in functional redundancy and network robustness in a plant‐pollinator community. Functional Ecology, 37, 748-762
Arce A*, Cantwell-Jones A*, Tansley M, et al., (2022). Signatures of increasing environmental stress in bumblebee wings over the past century: Insights from museum specimens. Journal of Animal Ecology.
* joint first authors
Cantwell-Jones A, Ball J, Collar D, et al., (2022). Global plant diversity as a reservoir of micronutrients for humanity. Nature Plants, Vol:8, Pages:225-232. DOI Open Access Link
Cantwell-Jones A, Wurster C, Zwart C, et al., (2020). Can ancient insect exoskeleton δ13C values be used to infer past vegetation types? Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, Vol:555, Pages:109857-109857
I am a PhD enrolled in the Science and Solutions for a Changing Planet doctoral training programme at the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London.
My project and interests broadly focus on understanding how bumblebees interact with plants, how key bumblebee life-history traits underpin these interactions, and how these interactions could be jeopardised by climate change. Understanding the links between climate change, bumblebee traits and bumblebee-plant interactions is essential given bumblebees are important insect pollinators yet face threats from anthropogenic activities in many regions of the world.
To answer these questions, I conduct fieldwork on a mountain in the Arctic circle (northern Sweden). Here, I study the bumblebees in an environment largely untouched by humans and can start to isolate the effect of climate change on the community. This study site is also around a century old, meaning I can track long-term changes in the bumblebee and plant communities.