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HOME » Research
Research
The vision of BRC is to maintain and enhance a world-class observatory
for biodiversity in the United Kingdom, linking volunteer efforts to
those of research scientists, and developing innovative observational
projects that add new insights into large-scale biological processes.
In the longer term we aim to participate in a European network of observatories
with similar aims.
Here are some of our research questions.
- Patterns and causes of change in the distribution of taxa
- How do processes
of range expansion and contraction differ for animals and
plants with northern distributions from those with southern distributions?
- What
is the net effect of combined habitat loss and increasingly favourable
climate on the
distribution and abundance of Britain’s
butterflies?
- Which
groups are changing most? Why have butterflies
experienced greater net losses than birds or vascular plants?
- In
the New Atlas of the British and Irish Flora plants with particular
ecological attributes (e.g. small plants and those characteristic
of infertile soils) have fared badly in recent decades; where is this happening
and why?
- Biodiversity of Britain and Ireland in its European and world context
- What
are patterns of distribution of British plants at the European
scale?
- How can we summarize world distributions in a way that helps
us to understand what is happening in Britain?
- How can we effectively
group species into biogeographical elements?
- Ecological attributes of fauna and flora
- Non-native plants and animals
- How do non-native taxa contribute
to Britain's diversity and what effect are they having?
- How are
non-native taxa changing in comparison with the natives?
- Taxonomy, phylogenetics and phylogeography
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