The Ecotron is a unique controlled environment
facility based at the NERC Centre for Population Biology, Imperial College at Silwood Park.
It allows up to 16 individual, small (1m2) terrestrial ecosystems to be created under
precisely controlled environmental conditions, with known flora and fauna, and
standardised microbial assemblages. For more information about the Ecotron facility, please visit the
Ecotron website.
As part of the Soil Biodiversity Programme the
Ecotron Research Team created in the Ecotron, model analogues of Sourhope
grassland. The role of different faunal groups
- and
their interactions - in soil carbon and nitrogen fluxes were explored
using controlled manipulations of the soil fauna.
For more information, see
Ecotron Soil Biodiversity Experiment
The Ecotron Soil Biodiversity Experiment
Research Team were:
Professors John Lawton
and Charles Godfray, CPB, Silwood
Dr Hefin Jones Cardiff University and CPB, Silwood
Dr Mark Bradford Post-doctoral Researcher and Lead
Experimenter
(funded by Soil Biodiversity Grant) now at Duke University, North
Carolina, USA
Dr Sebastian Catovsky,
Post-doctural Research Associate
Till Eggers Graduate Research Officer
John Newington Research Technician and Collaborator
Liaison (funded by Soil Biodiversity Grant)
George Tordoff Research Technician
Chris Denham, Mechanical
Engineer
Dennis Wildman Electronics Engineer
Victoria Smith,
Undergraduate Placement Student
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