Research: Biodiversity, Ecosystems and Conservation
Conservation Biogeography and Macroecology Programme
We work at the interface between the disciplines of conservation, biogeography and macroecology, and in particular within the newly emerging sub-discipline of conservation biogeography. This initiative was newly established in August 2010, building on more than a decade of prior work by members of the School's Biodiversity research group. Past and present members are highlighted in bold in the publications list, alongside our extensive network of international collaborators. Within the University of Oxford, we collaborate with other members of the Biodiversity, Ecosystems and Conservation research cluster in the School of Geography and the Environment, and as a part of the newly established Oxford Biodiversity Institute.
People
- Professor Robert J. Whittaker
Professor of Biogeography - Dr Richard Grenyer
University Lecturer in Biodiversity and Biogeography - Dr Shonil Bhagwat
Course Director, MSc in Biodiversity, Conservation and Management - Dr Kate Parr
Trapnell Fellow in African Ecology - Dr Richard Bailey
University Lecturer in Geochronology - Professor José-Maria Fernández-Palacios
Senior Visiting Research Associate - Dr Richard Ladle
Senior Visiting Research Associate - Dr Konstantinos Triantis
Visiting Research Associate
Conservation Biogeography
Conservation biogeography is the application of biogeographical principles, theories, and analyses - those concerned with the distributional dynamics of taxa individually and collectively - to problems concerning the conservation of biodiversity. In broad terms conservation biogeography is concerned with pattern and process over large extents of space (and time), and our interests within this field are exemplified by past and present projects and publications including:
- Developing the role of biogeography within conservation science (find out more)
- The analysis of how fragmentation and insularisation of habitats alter ecosystems and generate often lagged species extinctions (find out more)
- Implications of global environmental change for species distributions and diversity (find out more)
Macroecology
Macroecology is the analysis of emergent outcomes of statistical properties of ecological and/or biogeographical data sets.
- Species diversity, scale, and water-energy dynamics (find out more)
- Island biogeography theory extended to oceanic islands (find out more)
Biogeography
Biogeography is the study at all scales of analysis of the distribution of life across space, and how, through time, it has changed. Our focus is principally on ecological biogeography, much of it now as applied to problems within conservation science, but we also maintain other strands of research within biogeography:
- The recolonization and successional dynamics of Krakatau (find out more)
- The long-term dynamics of the Macaronesian islands and their biota (find out more)