Nicola Kühn passed her DPhil viva

Lab member Nicola Kühn passed her DPhil viva with minor corrections on 10 February 2022 with her thesis titled “Vegetation response to climate change: a traits-based approach”.

Nicola’s viva examiners were Prof Guy Midgley (University of Stellenbosch) and Dr Nikki Stevens (School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford). Nicola was supervised by Prof Kathy Willis (Department of Biology), Dr Marc Macias-Fauria (School of Geography and the Environment) and Dr Carolina Tovar (RBG, Kew). A key finding from her thesis was that in dry biomes often-neglected root traits contribute significantly to overall plant trait variation and are thus key in reducing sensitivity to climate variability and determining positive plant responses to climate change.