Search Marsden awards 2008–2017
Search awarded Marsden Fund grants 2008–2017
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2012
Title: Punctuated evolution: is rapid morphological change linked to speciation?
Recipient(s): Assoc Prof M Morgan-Richards | PI | Massey University
Dr AG Beu | AI | GNS Science
Dr JS Crampton | AI | GNS Science
Assoc Prof SA Trewick | AI | Massey University
Public Summary: The study of fossils provides an impression of morphological evolution made up of long periods of constrained evolution when nothing changes interspersed with geologically sudden leaps in form. Many interpret these abrupt changes in morphology as being the result of speciation (punctuated equilibrium). Other explanations for this pattern are possible and include rapid adaptation without speciation, the invasion of species from elsewhere, or hybridisation. New Zealand has one of the world’s best fossil records for marine snails and many lineages in the rocks have relatives alive today. For the first time we can study the morphology and the molecular evolution of the same snail lineages united to produce a time-space integrated view of phenotypic divergence. This project brings together a unique combination of paleontologists, molecular geneticists and phylogeographers to study speciation in the past and present. Using mathematical analysis of shell shape changes and the latest DNA sequencing tools we will determine whether the timing of morphological change coincides with speciation inferred from molecular phylogenetics. By answering the fundamental question “Is morphological change the result of species formation?” we will place New Zealand at the forefront of speciation research internationally.
Total Awarded: $600,000
Duration: 3
Host: Massey University
Contact Person: Assoc Prof M Morgan-Richards
Panel: EEB
Project ID: 12-MAU-008
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2014
Title: Pushed to the limits: investigating the significance of agricultural transfers and innovation in southern Polynesian colonisation
Recipient(s): Associate Professor IG Barber | PI | University of Otago
Professor RJ Barker | AI | University of Otago
Public Summary: This research is concerned with a profound, unresolved problem in New Zealand archaeology: what role did introduced tropical crops and agricultural technologies play in the colonisation of southern Polynesia, including the Chatham Islands? The adaptation of plant production systems and the seasonal acclimatisation of tropical Asia-Pacific and American crops at Oceania's coldest, southernmost limits represents an extraordinary component of New Zealand Polynesian colonisation. Evidence of this includes the southern-most world records of wet cultivation (far northern New Zealand) and dry sweet potato cultivation (East Coast South Island) respectively. There is rigorous debate about when, where and why these practices began or ceased, and their importance in anchoring colonisation compared to hunting-foraging. Our project defines competing 'foraging-driven' and 'agronomy-anchored' colonisation models. The latter model assumes that early Polynesian cultivators were motivated both to reproduce social systems and satisfy subsistence needs. This model is tested from GIS analyses of archaeological plant production and settlement relationships, new radiocarbon dates for agronomic innovations and land use, and environmental change data from climatically sensitive, production-threshold regions. We will discover the chronologies, technologies and sociocultural as well as economic contributions of New Zealand's first, agricultural products and systems in the colonisation process.
Total Awarded: $720,000
Duration: 3
Host: University of Otago
Contact Person: Associate Professor IG Barber
Panel: EHB
Project ID: 14-UOO-268
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Fast-Start
Year Awarded: 2015
Title: Putting a lid on it: dynamic and thermodynamic effects of an active, multi-phase interfacial layer on boundary-layer interactions
Recipient(s): Dr NJ Robinson | PI | NIWA - The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd
Dr BK Galton-Fenzi | AI | Australian Antarctic Division and ACE CRC
Dr CL Stevens | AI | NIWA - The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd
Public Summary: Sea ice is a major component of the Earth's climate. Nevertheless, present climate models fail to capture the apparent paradox of expanding Antarctic sea ice cover in a warming world. A big unknown in this puzzle is the contribution of ice shelves melted from beneath by warming oceans. This melting generates slightly fresh and extremely cold seawater that leads to increased sea ice growth: melting one type of ice drives growth of a different type. The hypothesis here is that the key to this conversion, not currently captured in any model at any scale, are layers of ice crystals that form in this very cold - supercooled - seawater. Vast quantities of these crystals buoyantly accumulate at the ice-ocean boundary and form porous, mobile, active and hydraulically-rough interfaces. We have designed a field campaign to understand how the system is modified by these layers of crystals. We will then integrate the new findings into ice-ocean models which will allow us to extend its application to less-accessible systems. This work will focus attention on the fine-scales that shape globally-significant processes, and represents a new frontier in polar ocean physics.
Total Awarded: $300,000
Duration: 3
Host: National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research
Contact Person: Dr NJ Robinson
Panel: ESA
Project ID: 15-NIW-007
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2017
Title: Putting Hope into Action: What inspires and sustains young people’s engagement in social movements?
Recipient(s): Associate Professor KM Nairn | PI | University of Otago
Associate Professor J Kidman | AI | Victoria University of Wellington
Associate Professor AN Lacey | AI | The University of Auckland
Dr JL Sligo | AI | University of Otago
Public Summary: Hope for social change is a powerful catalyst for taking political action. Our aim is to understand the role of hope in the politicisation of young people (aged 18-29) in New Zealand. How might hope for social change inspire, and sustain, young people’s political action? Brexit, Trump, and recent UK elections have generated considerable debate about the role of the ‘youth vote’, challenging assumptions of young people as apolitical. Working with six collectives of young people, which are addressing social and environmental injustices, we will explore how they put their hopes for social change into action. Deploying activist history interviews and ethnographic methods, such as participant observation and social media, we will investigate what sustains young people’s collective engagement. Each collective will be invited to present their vision for the future as a ‘living manifesto’. The project will fill a significant research gap in New Zealand while making an important contribution to international research on politics, new social movements, and the role of hope. As a society, it is imperative we understand what kinds of futures young people are working towards because their hopes and actions could transform the lives of future generations.
Total Awarded: $840,000
Duration: 3
Host: University of Otago
Contact Person: Associate Professor KM Nairn
Panel: SOC
Project ID: 17-UOO-003
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Fast-Start
Year Awarded: 2014
Title: Putting the heat on high-temperature superconductors
Recipient(s): Dr JG Storey | PI | Victoria University of Wellington
Professor JR Cooper | AI | University of Cambridge
Public Summary: After nearly three decades a microscopic understanding of high-temperature superconductivity is ripe for the picking, yet, despite some significant advances, remains tantalizingly out of reach. The proposed research aims to address this situation by identifying the relationships between the various electronic correlations present within high-temperature superconductors (HTS). Do they compete against, coexist with or cause superconductivity? Answers lie in a precise determination of the Fermi surface – a slice through the electronic structure separating occupied and unoccupied electronic energy levels. Areas targeted include the pseudogap – an energy gap of as yet unknown origin which appears on parts of the Fermi surface, as well as the new iron-based HTS. We will search for signs of a phase transition associated with the pseudogap by extending our differential specific heat measurements to single crystal samples, especially a key mercury-based compound. Thermopower measurements will test ideas connecting the pseudogap with electron-like Fermi surface pockets and Fermi surface reconstruction. Groundbreaking differential specific heat measurements under pressure will be used to determine the number of energy bands and superconducting energy gaps in an iron-based HTS. Finally, this research will pave the way for the development of advanced thermodynamic characterization techniques in New Zealand.
Total Awarded: $300,000
Duration: 3
Host: Victoria University of Wellington
Contact Person: Dr JG Storey
Panel: PCB
Project ID: 14-VUW-177
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2015
Title: Putting the Pacific Ocean to the litmus test: resolving a multi-millennial record of ocean pH from corals with the boron isotope proxy
Recipient(s): Professor PS Kench | PI | The University of Auckland
Associate Professor CH Stirling | AI | University of Otago
Associate Professor SG Smithers | AI | James Cook University
Dr GL Foster | AI | University of Southampton
Professor JA Baker | AI | The University of Auckland
Professor KA Campbell | AI | The University of Auckland
Public Summary: Instrumental records over the past three decades indicate that the world's oceans are rapidly becoming acidic (decreasing ocean pH). However, there is no context for interpreting the ongoing rate and magnitude of change in pH, as past change and variability from the pre-industrial era have not been reconstructed at high resolution. Using cutting-edge geochemical techniques (boron isotopes) we will reconstruct unique 3,000 yr records of past ocean pH in the Pacific Ocean from tropical corals. For the first time, results will robustly constrain past ocean pH changes, temporal-spatial variability in ocean pH, and future model projections and implications of ocean acidification.
Total Awarded: $810,000
Duration: 3
Host: The University of Auckland
Contact Person: Professor PS Kench
Panel: ESA
Project ID: 15-UOA-265
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2014
Title: Putting the squeeze on atoms and molecules: accurate quantum simulations of atomic and molecular phases under high pressures and temperatures
Recipient(s): Professor PA Schwerdtfeger | PI | Massey University
Dr E Pahl | PI | Massey University
Public Summary: Life is limited to a rather narrow range of pressures and temperatures. It is therefore no surprise that modern chemistry and physics is mainly focused around “normal” conditions with only moderately elevated temperatures and pressures. Recent experimental progress in high-pressure chemistry and physics has made it possible, however, to study materials at ultra-high pressures (up to 400 GPa) and temperatures (up to 4000 K), giving access to materials with novel structural, electronic and magnetic properties. Our chemical intuition, stemming from the knowledge at normal conditions, is stretched by increasing coordination numbers and breaking and forming new bonds under pressure, e.g. hydrogen becomes metallic, nitrogen oligomerizes, and lithium liquifies by applying pressures of the order of a million times the atmospheric pressure. With the pressure-induced decrease of inter-atomic distances both electronic and structural modifications can lead to new and unexpected electronic properties. Thus materials chemistry under ultra-high pressure is an important emerging research area, opening up exciting novel routes for stabilizing novel and interesting compounds. To gain a detailed understanding and guide future experiments we want to accurately simulate the phase behaviour of bulk systems and nanoclusters at such extreme conditions by using a combined quantum-theoretical and Monte Carlo treatment.
Total Awarded: $750,000
Duration: 3
Host: Massey University
Contact Person: Professor PA Schwerdtfeger
Panel: PCB
Project ID: 14-MAU-034
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Fast-Start
Year Awarded: 2008
Title: Quantifying fitness using sex reversal of fish: an ultimate conservation biology tool
Recipient(s): Dr S Nakagawa | PI | University of Otago
Dr GP Closs | AI | University of Otago
Dr DK Lamatsch | AI | The Institute for Limnology | Austrian Academy of Sciences
Dr PM Lokman | AI | University of Otago
Public Summary: Recently, the introduction of individuals who carry Trojan sex chromosomes (hormone-treated individuals whose sex has been reversed from their genotype) into wild populations has been proposed as a potential way of not only exterminating exotic species but also of saving endangered species. However the ecology of individuals carrying Trojan sex chromosomes and their offspring is virtually unknown. We will carry out the first comprehensive investigation quantifying the fitness of Trojan individuals and their offspring. This work extends our knowledge on intricate relationships among genes, hormones and phenotypic characters. Importantly, it explores the feasibility of introducing Trojan individuals into wild populations.
Total Awarded: $266,667
Duration: 3
Host: University of Otago
Contact Person: Dr S Nakagawa
Panel: EEB
Project ID: 08-UOO-154
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2016
Title: Quantifying the importance of non-additive competition in diverse natural plant communities
Recipient(s): Associate Professor DB Stouffer | PI | University of Canterbury
Associate Professor MM Mayfield | PI | University of Queensland
Public Summary: Competition between species is central to understanding how the natural world works and is regarded by many ecologists as a critical factor in determining species coexistence. Within the literature, the notion that competition is an additive process---implying that pairwise interactions are enough to explain the outcomes of competitive interactions between species---has effectively become dogma among both theoreticians and empiricists. There are a variety of reasons, however, why nature may not work quite so simply and that competition is actually a non-additive process. We will therefore develop a novel framework to test the validity of this foundational assumption. We will then apply this framework to datasets from two primary types of natural plant communities to quantitatively gauge the empirical support for non-additive competition: temperate, perennial grasslands in the South Island of New Zealand and forb-dominated, annual-plant communities in semi-arid Western Australia. Lastly, we will evaluate the extent to which this revised perspective on competition between plants alters our understanding of the mechanisms of coexistence, as well as our general appreciation for the complexity of diverse plant assemblages. Overall, our research will critically examine the role played by non-additive competition in mediating local to large-scale patterns of plant biodiversity.
Total Awarded: $795,000
Duration: 3
Host: University of Canterbury
Contact Person: Associate Professor DB Stouffer
Panel: EEB
Project ID: 16-UOC-008
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Fast-Start
Year Awarded: 2011
Title: Quantum tunnelling and the zeno effect for individual atoms
Recipient(s): Dr TI Grunzweig | PI | University of Otago
Public Summary: Funding not taken up
Total Awarded: $300,000
Duration: 3
Host: University of Otago
Contact Person: Dr TI Grunzweig
Panel: PCB
Project ID: 11-UOO-215