Gill research group
insect ecology & evolution
PhD - Aoife Cantwell-Jones

aoife.cantwell-jones15(at)imperial.ac.uk
Link to my Imperial College webpage
Publications
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. DOI Open Access Link
* 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.