DeepBio@Leeds

Annabel Nicholls has joined the Palaeo@Leeds group as a NERC funded Research Assistant. Annabel will be working on the recently funded Exploring the Frontiers project entitled “Ecosystem recovery following the Permo-Triassic mass extinction“.

Annabel’s project will explore a novel approach to mass extinction palaeobiology research via interdisciplinary methods combining recent advances in ecological modelling with palaeontology. Specifically, she will test how marine ecosystems recovered from the PTME and whether this biotic crisis truly represented the beginning of the origins of modern marine ecosystem structure.

The project involves:

• Modelling marine food webs to reconstruct a time series of fossil communities of interacting organisms through the PTME and recovery interval.
• Quantifying changes in ecosystem structure and function in order to determine the nature and timing of ecological and evolutionary changes across the extinction and recovery interval.