News

New paper

Jianqiao published a paper investigating how agricultural management practices shape the biodiversity impacts of human land use.

New paper

Chenchen published a paper classifying the vulnerability of dryland birds to heatwaves.

New paper

Adrienne published another paper from her PhD, investigating how species traits correlate with observed responses to land use and expected range shifts due to climate change. Species with narrow geographic ranges and specialization on natural habitats emerge as being particularly at risk.

New preprint

Daan has deposited the first paper from his PhD. In it he explores the use of Large Language Models for synthesizing information from the ecological literature, specifically focusing on the identification of species involved in agricultural pest control.

Welcome

We welcome Maria Klimczak, who will be doing a masters research project with Silvia, investigating how field size influences biodiversity within agricultural systems.

New paper

Joe Millard led a paper published last week in Science Advances showing how interactive effects of climate change and land use are associated with large declines in the abundance of pollinators. Declines are estimated to be particularly strong where we grow key crops that depend on animal pollination, such as coffee and cocoa.

Welcome

We welcome Rodolfo Assis Magalhaes to the research group. Rodolfo will be researching how land-use change impact the diversity and activity patterns of South American biodiversity.

Welcome

We welcome several new faces to the group in January. Daan Scheepens is starting his PhD in the group, investigating the impact of biodiversity change on pollination and pest control ecosystem services. Also, Romuald Tcheutchoua and Grace Moore will be doing PhDs secondary supervised by Tim, and so associated with the group. Finally, we also have 3 research masters students joining the group to do their first research projects: Rudai Zan, Aubane Carre de Malberg and Wenbo Chen.

New paper

Gonzalo has published a paper from his PhD in Global Change Biology showing that populations of fast-lived species fare better in the face of environmental changes than those of slow-lived species.

Viva success!

Adrienne Etard passed her PhD viva with minor corrections.

Viva success!

Gonzalo Albaladejo-Robles passed his PhD viva with minor corrections.

New paper

Charlie published a paper in Global Ecology & Biogeography showing how agricultural practices and the availiability of natural habitat shape farmland biodiversity worldwide.

Welcome

Kin Nok (Stanley) Chan and Ciara Duggan have joined the group. Stanley is working with Tim on the impacts of forest cover on biodiversity, and Ciara is working with Jess Williams on potential impacts of land-use-climate interactions on zoonotic disease risk.

New paper

Charlie led an important study of the impact on insect biodiversity of interactions between climate change and land use, published today in Nature.

Welcome

Lauren Cocker and Zhen Tan have joined the group. They are working mainly with Charlie on UK insect trends.

Research featured in IPCC report

Our research was featured in the IPCC's sixth Assessment Report (AR6), in particular my 2018 paper projecting future global effects of climate and land-use change, and Peter Soroye's paper on the impact on bumblebees of exceedance of thermal tolerance limits

Welcome

Justin Isip has started his PhD, supervised mainly by Andy Purvis at the Natural History Museum, investigating how human activities restructure insect communities

Viva success!

Joe Millard passed his PhD viva with minor corrections.

New paper

Jess's final PhD paper, showing how vertebrate population trends are influenced by interactive effects of climate change and land-use change, is published in Global Change Biology.

New paper

Adrienne's paper demonstrating the impacts of human land use on vertebrate functional diversity is published in Ecology Letters.

Welcome

Holly Souza-Newman has joined the group to conduct her masters research project, investigating the impacts of land-use change on pest control species.

Viva success!

Jess Williams passed her PhD viva today with no corrections.

Podcast

I was interviewed for The Economist's Babbage podcast, talking about ecosystem and biodiversity modelling. Listen to the podcast here.

New paper

Joe Millard has just published the latest paper from his PhD project, showing how land-use intensification impacts pollinator biodiversity in different parts of the world. Joe shows that impacts are stronger in the tropics, and for bees and butterflies compared to other groups of species.

Podcast

I was interviewed for the Savage Minds podcast. Listen to the podcast here.

Welcome to new masters student

Dingding Liu joins our research group today, working with the TRADE Hub to investigate biodiversity footprints from traded agricultural commodities.

New paper

A paper led by Jess Williams was published today in Diversity Distributions. In it we show that populations near to their climatic niche limits tend to be more affected by human land uses than populations further from those niche limits.

New paper

A perspective piece and review on the links between biodiversity, agriculture and international trade, led by Monica Ortiz and Charlie Outhwaite, was published in One Earth.

Welcome to new masters students

Bjorn Franke, Charlotte Benham and James Hatry join our research group to conduct research projects, working on the Madingley Model, BIOTA Project and TRADE Project, respectively.

New paper

In a new paper, led by Adrienne Etard, we show that data on the traits of vertebrate species are much less available for reptiles and amphibians, and in the species-rich tropics.

New paper

In a new paper just published, we show that biodiversity in tropical and Mediterranean areas is disproportionately sensitive to both land-use change and climate change.

Living Planet Report

The Living Planet Report 2020 was published today, with grim statistics on the state of biodiversity. The report contained contributions on drivers of biodiversity change on land from our group, led by Adrienne Etard and Jess Williams.

New papers: bending the curve of biodiversity loss and importance of strict protected areas

Two new papers out today! The first, led by David Leclere at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis is the culmination of massive biodiversity modelling exercise using many different biodiversity models, including those using the PREDICTS database that I helped to develop. This paper shows that coordinated, international action on a number of fronts can reverse recent biodiversity losses. The second paper, led by recently completed PhD student Gee Braga Ferreira, shows that strict protected areas are necessary to conserve mammal diversity in the Brazilan Cerrado.

New paper: human removal of plants from ecosystems causes non-linear and irreversible changes across the whole ecosystem

I have a new paper, using the Madingley Model to show that removal of plant biomass from ecosystems causes non-linear and irreversible changes across whole ecosystems.

New paper: human disturbance of habitats favours animals that carry human disease

A paper, led by Rory Gibb, shows that when humans disturb habitats for agriculture or towns/cities the ecological communities remaining have more hosts of zoonotic diseases.

New paper: calling for a extinctions-based biodiversity target to rally action, akin to the 1.5° target for climate change

A Policy Forum, led by Mark Rounsevell at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, calls for a easily communicable target for biodiversity akin to the 1.5° target for climate change.

Welcome to Tasmin Alexander

Tasmin Alexander is doing her MRes project on the impacts of trade on biodiversity, working between the TRADE Hub and SENTINEL Project.

Welcome to Silvia Ceausu

Silvia Ceausu joined us to day, as the UCL post-doctoral researcher on the TRADE Hub.

World Biodiversity Forum 2020

I gave a talk at the inaugural World Biodiversity Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

New paper: climate makes significant contribution to observed bumblebee declines

A paper, led by Peter Soroye at the University of Ottawa, has shown the strongest signal to date of climate change on observed bumblebee declines.

New paper: human land use affects different functional groups to varying extents

Our new paper in Functional Ecology shows that the effects of land use fall unequally on different functional groups, with small carnivores showing particularly large declines in human-disturbed areas.

New paper: human land use favours species that tolerate more extreme climates

In the second paper from her PhD, Jess Williams shows that human land uses favour species that inhabit more extreme climates, pointing toward potential synergistic interactions between the effects of climate change and land-use change on biodiversity.

New paper: effects of land use on biodiversity in dryland and Mediterranean environments

A paper, led by former masters student Diego García-Vega has just been published in Biodiversity and Conservation. The paper tested the effects of land use on the biodiversity of dryland and Mediterranean regions around the world.

New paper: review on the effect of climate changes caused by land use on biodiversity

Jess Williams led a review on the effects that the climatic changes caused by land-use change have on ecological communities, which has just been published in the journal Diversity & Distributions.

New paper: geographic and taxonomic disparities in the animal pollination literature

Joe Millard's first PhD paper, quantifying geographic and taxonomic disparities in the animal pollination literature has been published in Ecography.

New paper: effects of land use on rare and common species

Lou Sykes, one of last year's masters students, has had her project published in Conservation Biology. Lou investigated how land use affects species with different forms of rarity or commonness (geographical rarity, numerical abundance and habitat specialisation).

Welcome to Tania Barychka

Welcome to Tania Barychka, who starts today on a Leverhulme-funded project, combining the Madingley General Ecosystem Model with Ecological Neutral Theory to make novel predictions about the impacts of human activities on the world's ecosystems.

PREDICTS research in IPBES Global Assessment

Our work on the impacts of land use on biodiversity featured heavily in the recently launched IPBES Global Assessment, including several mentions in the Summary for Policymakers.

Exchange on the Biodiversity Intactness Index

The conservation science group at Cambridge published a critique of our estimates of biodiversity intactness, to which we provided a response. This is an important discussion, highlighting some of the limitations of global-scale models.

Talk in Oxford

I am giving a talk to the Oxford Centre for Tropical forests in Oxford on Friday 3rd May.

Review on biodiversity change and its consequences

Our research group has just published a review paper on the homogenisation of biodiversity driven by climate and land-use change, and its consequences for ecosystem functioning and human well-being.

Paper on agricultural intensification and biodiversity

A paper from a working group with which I was involved has been published in Global Change Biology. The paper investigates the how agricultural intensification in different contexts impacts yields and biodiversity.

Perspectives paper

Nature Ecology & Evolution have just published a perspectives paper I wrote on a nice paper by Alexandra Marques and colleagues, which shows that global trade is driving an increasing loss of biodiversity and carbon sequestration.

New masters students join the team

Philippa Oppenheimer and Georgina Hislop have joined the team. They are both working on the SENTINEL Project.

New paper on homogenization of ecological communities

A new paper from the PREDICTS Project has been published. We show that human use of the land consistently favours widespread species and removes localized species. The paper was covered on the BBC and Le Monde.

Seminar at Queen Mary University of London

I am giving a seminar at Queen Mary, on Thursday 29th November at 1 pm: details.

Charlie Outhwaite and Monica Ortiz join the group

Charlie Outhwaite and Monica Ortiz join the group today, working on the new NERC-funded BIOTA Project to assess interactions between agriculture and biodiversity. Charlie will work mainly with me in the Centre for Biodiversity and Environment Research and Monica mainly with Carole Dalin in the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources.

New paper from the PREDICTS Project

Martin Jung, a PhD student with the PREDICTS Project has just published a paper showing that ecological community structure is more influenced by past than by current vegetation.

New paper on the combined future impacts of land-use and climate change on biodiversity

My paper predicting the future impacts of climate and land-use change has just been published in Proceedings of the Royal Society. A nice summary of the paper is given in an article on Carbon Brief.

Robyn Kinnersley starts her masters project

Robyn Kinnersley has started her masters project with me, investigating how European pollinators respond to land use.

Abbie Chapman joins the team

Abbie Chapman joins the team today. She will be working on the SENTINEL Project.

PREDICTS in the IPBES land degradation report

Joe Millard starts his PhD project

Joe Millard starts his PhD project today, investigating how land use and climate are influencing pollinator communities.

Seminar at Queen Mary University of London

I am giving a seminar in the Organismal Biology and Biological and Experimental Psychology Seminar Series at Queen Mary University of London, on 15th March 2018. See here for more details.

Joined the editorial board of Biology Letters

I have just joined the editorial board of the journal Biology Letters.

The present and future of biodiversity in African grasslands and savannas

We have just published a paper as part of our Dynamics of African Ecosystems Project, predicting the status and future trends of biodiversity in the tropical grasslands and savannas of Africa using two very different modelling approaches: the statistical models from the PREDICTS Project and the process-based Madingley Model.

Symposium on predicting change in biodiversity and ecosystem function

We are holding a symposium on predicting changes in biodiversity loss and consequences for ecosystem function, as part of the London Centre for Ecology & Evolution. Register here. Submit your abstracts for a talk or poster here. We are bringing together scientists tackling this problem using very different methods and working on different systems. Confirmed keynote speakers are Amanda Bates, Andy Hector, Nathalie Pettorelli, Peter Verburg, Cristina Banks-Leite, Adriana De Palma, Michelle Jackson, Felix Eigenbrod, Kate Jones and me.

Subject editor for Ecography

I have just become a subject editor for the journal Ecography.

Comparing PREDICTS models for Africa with independent field data

A paper led by Martin Jung was published today. The study compared models of how biodiversity responds to land use across the whole of Africa (using the just-published data from the PREDICTS Project) with independent field data from two localities that Martin collected during his masters course. The study also investigated some of the factors that might have been responsible for the observed differences between the Africa-wide models and the independent field data.

PREDICTS database published

The PREDICTS database was published today on the Natural History Museum's data portal. The database is described in an accompanying paper in Ecology & Evolution.

Cambridge Conference on Catastrophic Risk

I am talking about biodiversity loss today at the inaugural Cambridge Conference on Catastrophic Risk.

We are hiring

We are looking for a postdoc to work on the Dynamics of African Ecosystems Project. See here for more details.

Royal Society University Research Fellowship

I start today on a Royal Society University Research fellowship, investigating the combined impacts of land-use and climate change on ecological communities.

Seminar at Sussex University

I am giving a seminar this Thursday (29th September), entitled 'Predicting changes in local biodiversity under human pressures', for the School of Life Sciences at Sussex University.

Effects of habitat loss and fragmentation simulated using the Madingley Model

A paper using the Madingley Model, led by Lewis Bartlett, was published today. It explores the effects on ecosystem structure of the combined and interacting effects of habitat loss and habitat fragmentation.

Biodiversity change in Colombia

A paper was published today led by Susy Echeverría-Londoño, quantifying change in the species composition of ecological communities in Colombia.

Biodiversity inside and outside protected areas

An open-access paper led by Claudia Gray and Sam Hill showing that biodiversity is higher inside than outside protected areas, even where humans have modified the habitat, was published today. The paper received some coverage in the media.

Biodiversity loss past proposed safe limits across most of the world's land surface

A new paper shows that biodiversity loss as a result of land-use change has exceeded the proposed planetary boundary across most of the world's land surface. This paper received good coverage in the media. The full version of the paper is behind a paywall, but you can download an unformatted version here.