How anthropogenic nitrogen deposition can alter belowground fungal communities and degradation rates in a Norwegian heathland system. Project background The boreal, alpine, and arctic heaths and forests are dominated by dwarf-shrubs along with their symbionts, ericoid mycorrhizal fungi. It remains to explore how their mycorrhizal symbionts mitigate damages resulting from climate change or pollution, since READ MORE
Category: Masters
Master thesis opportunities
MSc thesis opportunities in project DURIN
Background Dwarf-shrubs (Ericaceae) are a dominant plant functional group across the boreal, arctic, and alpine biomes, where they play important roles for biodiversity, ecology and ecosystem functioning. For example, dwarf-shrubs provide important food resources for grazers, pollinators, and people, they are habitat for other plants, insects, rodents, and birds, and through interactions with belowground fungal READ MORE
MSc thesis: Disentangling drivers of plant population establishment after range expansion
Background Due to climate warming, plant species are shifting their ranges, trying to track their climatic niches. This can for example be displayed by range expansions or upward shifts of plants from lower elevations. Changes in community composition are occurring with novel lowland species invading into the alpine ecosystem. The RangeX project is an upslope READ MORE
MSc thesis: Identifying decomposers of fungal mycelium across climate gradients and plant removals
Project description Decomposition – the recycling of nutrients from dead organic matter (e.g., plant litter, fungal and bacterial necromass) – is key for ecosystem productivity in terrestrial ecosystems. It liberates carbon and nutrients that can be used to produce new, living biomass. Not all organic matter is fully decomposed and, thus, released back to the READ MORE
UPCOMING – MSc thesis: Quantifying the functional potential of soil microbial communities
Project description Soil microbial communities perform a multitude of ecosystem functions in the soil ecosystem (Crowther et al. 2019). Quantifying the functional potential of microbial communities is useful for studying microbially mediated ecosystem processes such as carbon (Trivedi et al. 2016) and nitrogen cycling (Zhang et al. 2013), how they respond to environmental and ecosystem READ MORE
MSc thesis: Soil bacterial and fungal abundance in response to plant removals across climatic gradients
Project description Climate change entails global and local shifts in temperature and precipitation, with consequences for biotic communities in above- and belowground ecosystems (Jansson and Hofmockel 2020). Soil bacteria and fungi are two major groups of microorganisms constituting a large part of the soil microbiome. Both groups include partners and parasites of plants as well READ MORE
Master theses related to the projects ECOBUDGETS and ECoMAP
Topic Ground truthing of biodiversity maps for nature accounting Summary In the face of nature loss at the scales we are witnessing today, nature accounting and budgeting starts receiving increased focus. At the basis of such accounts are the physical properties of nature: the extent and the condition of ecosystems. To create a physical nature READ MORE
Camera surveillance of pollinators in alpine grasslands
Are alpine flowers visited more during the day, or during the night? Does the importance of nocturnal pollinators differ with elevation? How do alpine pollinators respond to warming treatments? And is it possible that some pollinators “bully” others away from flowers while foraging? These are all questions that insect surveillance cameras help to address. We READ MORE
MSc thesis: Plant community responses to the direct and indirect effects of climate in the Vestland Climate grid
Background Alpine grasslands are vulnerable to climate change, and are currently changing rapidly in both plant functional group dominance (1) and species distributions (2). These biotic shifts contribute to indirect effect of climate change through influencing biotic interactions (3,4). Indeed, research is still needed on the effect of climate on long-term vegetation dynamics (5). Our READ MORE
MSc thesis: Impacts of range-expanding plants on pollinator interactions
Project background As both native and exotic species shift their distributions in response to climate warming and through biological invasions, many expand their ranges across elevational gradients. This expansion results in the reassembly of ecological communities, which meditates the effects of climate warming on biodiversity and key ecosystem functions. RangeX is a multidisciplinary, replicated field READ MORE