PhD students
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The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh hosts around 20 PhD students working on topics across the range of the Garden’s interests – from biogeography, conservation and genomics to floras and horticulture.
The students make use of the exceptional Living Collections, the Herbarium, Library and laboratories.
Getting a place
PhD students based at RBGE are registered at a range of universities worldwide and across the UK, and follow the entry requirements and assessment procedures of the university they are registered with. Supervisors at the degree-awarding university may be very involved in the project, or may take a more back seat role. RBGE staff should be able to advise on university partners for self-designed projects. If you have an idea of what you would like to work on, contact a staff member to discuss the project. PhDs at RBGE are also listed at https://www.findaphd.com/.
Funding
Information on funding for prospective University of Edinburgh students can be found here. RBGE students from overseas are often are funded by scholarships from their home countries, but many of our students are registered at the University of Edinburgh through their Doctoral training Programs (E4 and EastBio) or Darwin Fellowships.
Our students
I am a PhD student studying the impact of the Garden’s living and preserved collections on the climate and biodiversity crises. This project is a collaboration between the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and The University of Edinburgh.
The project will critically examine the way that RBGE’s collection is used to impact policy and practice nationally and internationally, and hopes ultimately to provide recommendations on how RBGE's collection can be used to impact conservation and climate outcomes more effectively, contributing to the wider discourse and practice surrounding environmental policymaking and the crucial role botanic garden collections can play in this.
Having previously completed an interdisciplinary MSc in Conservation Studies at the University of St Andrews, I am interested in science communication and how we can ensure that conservation work is being conducted in the most effective and appropriate way.
I am a passionate speaker and conservation educator, and I work for both the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland and the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. I am also the creator of Pangolin: The Conservation Podcast, a show which celebrates the stories of underappreciated species and amplifies the voices of underrepresented groups.
Africa’s Exceptional Monodominant Forest
I am a PhD student at RGBE and the University of Edinburgh studying monodominant forests in the Congo Basin. Tropical forests are the most diverse terrestrial ecosystems on earth. However, in the forests of central Africa, there is a species of tree, Gilbertiodendron dewevrei, that forms stands in which up to 80% of the trees belong to this one species, overturning every stereotype of plant diversity in the tropics.
My research focuses on examining these exceptional monodominant Gilbertiodendron forests and asking what the current distribution of this forest type is, and how this might change in the future. I am looking at their species composition in comparison to adjacent mixed species forest, mapping out their current extent, and asking whether they are expanding or contracting. I will also look at modelling how their distribution may change in the future, under different climatic conditions, and different trajectories of forest loss. Predicting expansion or contraction of this monodominant forest over the next 50 -100 years will be crucial for modelling the Congo Basin block for carbon storage and biodiversity, as G. dewevrei forest has higher carbon stocks and lower species diversity than mixed species forest.
Unexplored transitions between forests and savannas in Africa
I originally trained as a botanical horticulturist, focusing on using ex-situ plant collections for research and conservation. I joined RBGE in 2018 on the MSc in Biodiversity and Taxonomy of Plants. This was an amazing course and really motivated me to pursue research in tropical environments. My dissertation combined morphometric, ecological and population genomic data to study the taxonomy of the national tree of Brazil (Paubrasilia echinata). Currently I am a PhD candidate in the E4 DTP, where my research consists in exploring the floristic, structural and functional thresholds that are involved in the transitions between forests and savannas. My geographical focus is on Africa where these two environments represent over 60% of the land surface and provide ecosystem services to over 200 million people. Specifically my fieldwork is carried out in Angola, one of the least botanically explored countries in Africa, and which represents a region that will be subjected to strong environmental change in the near future according to prediction from the IPCC. Without ground-truth data, it will not be possible to accurately predict how climate change will impact these two biomes and what the consequences will be for the people that live and depend on these resources.
My doctoral research utilises inexpensive do-it-yourself air-sampling devices to capture lichen reproductive structures across field sites within Scotland. The collected material is pooled into composite samples, from which I extract environmental DNA (eDNA) for high throughput metabarcoding.
By combining sequence data with detailed microclimate measurements, I plan to document the phenology and spatial patterns of lichen dispersal and test how these factors influence community assembly. Such knowledge is urgently needed, as many of Scotland’s lichens are threatened by changing land use and climate. Yet, they are often overlooked in conservation planning and frequently lack genetic data in public databases.
Originating from a background in computational biology and field ecology, I aim to create reproducible work that is easy to use and incorporate into current survey methodologies at minimal cost for researchers and conservation practitioners.
Ultimately, the project aims to supply actionable benchmarks for habitat restoration, refine the methodological limits of airborne eDNA surveys, and demonstrate how low-cost technology can aid in biodiversity monitoring of Scottish landscapes.
Do duplicated genes drive morphological diversity?
I am a plant geneticist interested in applying biotechnological methods to new problems. Before starting my PhD, I completed my MBiol at the University of York and further pursued my interest in genetics by working for a plant biotechnology company. The aim of my project in the Kidner group is to utilise CRISPR technology to knock out duplicated genes in several begonia species and assess their morphological impact. This will help us understand how gene functions diverge after duplication. I am mainly based at the King’s Buildings at the University of Edinburgh optimising Begonia tissue culture, transformation and CRISPR editing.
The sex determination and dimorphism in the male and female flowers of Begonia
I began my PhD project in RBGE and the University of Edinburgh in April, 2021. Before I came here, I finished my MSc project in Northwest A&F University in China. My former projects are about morphology and phylogeny of Rosaceae, and I knew my current supervisor Dr. Ronse De Craene when I did a morphological study of Sanguisorba. I joined the big group of Begoniaceae when I came here. Impressed by the high morphological diversity of the family, I selected several representative species to study the floral ontogeny and dimorphism. Besides, I’m also planning to do some genetic work which I have never done before, to find out the factors which cause the sex differentiation. I am funded by the Darwin Trust of UoE.