Sam Ross

Research interests

I’m mainly interested in how global change erodes or otherwise modifies biodiversity and emergent properties of ecosystems.

Ecological stability is an emergent property of ecosystems that influences the ability of ecological communities to resist and recover from disturbance. Human-induced global change has the potential to erode ecological stability and alter the relationship between biodiversity and various emergent properties of ecosystems. I’m interested in trying to understand the multifaceted relationships between various aspects of global change (but principally urbanisation and climate change), the different facets of biodiversity and multidimensional ecological stability. These relationships are highly varied and complex, but I hope that by identifying any general features, we can gain a better understanding of how we’re impacting the natural world.

PhD Research

Funding: Irish Research Council Postgraduate Scholarship

We are increasingly gaining a better understanding of the multidimensional nature of ecological stability; that is, the multiple components of stability that include resistance, resilience and variability. Yet, we still don’t fully understand how various facets of biodiversity influence stability, and we know even less about how global change may be impacting these relationships. My PhD aims to broadly assess the impact of different aspects of global change on multidimensional ecological stability, using two complementary study systems in Japan. Focusing on ecoacoustics monitoring and manipulations of aquatic food webs, I’m asking several key research questions:

1. Conceptually, how does stability of biodiversity relate to the stability of functioning and service delivery?
2. How does urbanisation influence the temporal dynamics and stability of vocalising animal communities in Okinawa, Japan?
3. What do different trophic groups contribute to the multidimensional stability of mesocosm communities in response to a heatwave in Hokkaido, Japan?
4. How does urbanisation influence the multidimensional stability of vocalising animal communities in response to an extreme event in Okinawa, Japan?

For a full list of my research projects, please see my research website.

Publications

For an up-to-date list of publications, please see my my Google Scholar page, Researchgate or my research website.