About
23
Publications
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Introduction
Current institution
Additional affiliations
November 2018 - May 2019
Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
Position
- Analyst
March 2012 - April 2012
Education
September 2010 - September 2014
Publications
Publications (23)
The impacts of invasive house mice Mus musculus have received increasing attention on islands where mice are the only invasive rodent species. On Gough Island, the impact of mice on seabirds has increased over the past decade, but the current population status of the Critically Endangered Gough Finch Rowettia goughensis is uncertain. Based on nest...
Populations of Dracaena serrulata are disappearing at an alarming rate in the Arabian Peninsula. They are being destroyed by herders who use the leaves as fodder for camels, goats, and sheep during the dry season. Up until now, precise information about the current distribution and population status of D. serrulata in Oman have not been published....
Southern Arabia is a global biodiversity hotspot with a high proportion of endemic desert-adapted plants. Here we examine evidence for a Pleistocene climate refugium in the southern Central Desert of Oman, and its role in driving biogeographical patterns of endemism.
Distribution data for seven narrow-range endemic plants were collected systematica...
A recent study on a group of rough-skinned Gephyromantis frogs from Madagascar (Anura: Mantellidae: Mantellinae) established a new subgenus, Asperomantis, with five described species and one undescribed candidate species. Based on newly collected material from the Bealanana District, we address the taxonomy of this candidate species, and reveal tha...
Expanding the global network of Protected and Conserved Areas (PCAs) to cover 30% of the planet by 2030 (30-by-30) is mandated in the Global Biodiversity Framework. However, if PCA expansion is undertaken hastily, it risks inadvertently overlooking important species or ecosystems and entrenching existing spatial and taxonomic biases. We investigate...
The global biodiversity crisis in agriculture is overlooked compared with that in wild systems. This must change if we are to safeguard domesticated plant diversity and meet global sustainable development and biodiversity goals. In this Perspective, we review tools developed through decades of wild biodiversity conservation and provide a framework...
The global biodiversity crisis in agriculture is overlooked compared with that in wild systems. This must change if we are to safeguard domesticated plant diversity and meet global sustainable development and biodiversity goals. In this Perspective, we review tools developed through decades of wild biodiversity conservation and provide a framework...
There is a biodiversity crisis, and to prevent extinctions the most important sites to be effectively conserved must be identified. Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) include sites of importance for species survival. Alliance for Zero Extinction (AZE) sites, a subset of KBAs, contain ≥95% of the population of highly threatened species. Currently, only 4...
Many countries identify lists of priority species for biodiversity conservation. These are developed using different criteria which can change over time. We argue that priority species need to be selected using both global and national criteria, and make recommendations for identifying global priority sites and species in the United Kingdom (UK). W...
The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), to which 196 countries including the UK are contracting parties, set out 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets to be met by 2020. Elements of Aichi Target 11 call for at least 17% of terrestrial land and inland water to be protected and effectively managed by 2020. Each national government is requested to repor...
The designation of Marine Protected Areas has become an important approach to conserving marine ecosystems that relies on robust information on the spatial distribution of biodiversity. We used GPS tracking data to identify marine Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas
(IBAs) for the Endangered northern rockhopper penguin Eudyptes moseleyi within th...
Background and Aims: Southern Arabia is a global biodiversity hotspot with a high proportion of endemic desert-adapted plants. Here we examine evidence for a Pleistocene climate refugium in the southern Central Desert of Oman, and its role in driving biogeographical patterns of endemism.
Methods: Distribution data for seven narrow-range endemic pla...
Observations of species accompanied by accurate spatial location data not only allow the position of that record to be mapped but also allow it to be tied to a wide range of spatially explicit environmental data. These environmental data-sets cover a wide range of parameters, including vegetation, soils, geology, climate, topography and can include...
Developments in remote sensing offer new opportunities for making evaluations of the environment. This is particularly true for our overseas territories where study areas are remote or inaccessible, or large areas need to be covered. The different uses of imagery analysis allow a wealth of information about our environment to be collected at excell...
In 2007, the States of Jersey Department of the Environment (DoE) launched the National Amphibian and Reptile Recording Scheme (NARRS) in Jersey. The scheme forms part of the Department’s integrated ecological monitoring programme for Jersey in order to carry out 'State of the Environment Monitoring’. NARRS is coordinated by the UK organisation Amp...
Questions
Questions (2)
It seems to me that the plant distributions in this paper are explained not so much by the geology as by the collection history of New Guinea. The collection bias is not accounted for i.e. one degree grid cells with higher numbers of species may well also have a higher total number of collections. Indeed all of my collections maps for New Guinea indicate that collections are focussed mainly in the north and west of the island around Lae and Bulolo. Is this cause or effect of the findings from this paper?
In order to draw conclusions which are not heavily affected by sampling bias it must be necessary to correct for this e.g. by dividing number of collections by the number of species to get a value indicating the completeness of the flora for that area.
This metric would serve as an indication of perceived or actual species richness in relation to sampling, where a value of 1 indicates that every collection is a unique record of that species in the cell. Values tending towards 0 indicate that the same species have been collected several times within a cell.
Currently attempting to identify Ficus richness hotspots in New Guinea by combining individual Maxent models of each species.
