Selected publications

While flagship species are a highly effective approach in conservation, this article proposes the distinct but complementary concept of flagship events: natural or anthropogenic occurrences that attract public attention. Flagship events have high potential value for biodiversity conservation by engaging people with wildlife and helping to garner support for conservation efforts.

The study shows how interactions between climate change and urbanisation affect biodiversity and ecosystem dynamics. The authors point out that the interactions between these two drivers of global change can have far-reaching effects, and how this knowledge can inform urban planning.

This study evaluated the spatial, temporal, and seasonal coverage of over one million declassified images from 4 US spy-satellite programmes, showing that this data spans nearly the entire globe and all seasons. Their use could lead to better mapping of the historical extent and structure of ecosystems and human impacts, and help reconstruct past habitats and species distributions.

The study investigated the effects of the herbicide metolachlor on host-parasite interactions, using the host-parasite system of the toxigenic cyanobacterium Planktothrix agardhii and its chytrid parasite Rhizophydium megarrhizum. Metolachlor promoted cyanobacteria growth and caused multi and transgenerational detrimental effects on parasite fitness. However, these effects are reversible.

The authors created a database of lost and rediscovered tetrapod species (amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals), identified patterns in their distribution and factors influencing rediscovery. Tetrapod species are being lost at a faster rate than they are being rediscovered, due to slowing rates of rediscovery for amphibians, birds and mammals, and rapid rates of loss for reptiles

The study developed a workflow to downscale global future scenarios to a regional and policy-relevant context. This workflow was applied at the European scale to create four European scenarios of biological invasions until 2050 that consider different environmental, socio-economic and socio-cultural trajectories, namely the European Alien Species Narratives.

The authors focused on extensions of the logistic growth model, and how intrinsic rates of increase and equilibrium population densities are not independent, but instead are functions of the same underlying parameters.  They highlight several options for modeling population growth, and provide a mechanistic understanding of how the model parameters of each model relate to one another. 

The Environmental Impact Classification for Alien Taxa (EICAT) has been adopted as an International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) standard to measure the severity of environmental impacts caused by organisms living outside their native ranges. This article clarifies the underlying principles, objectives, and uses of EICAT.