We tested hypotheses explaining how different components of climate drive temporal turnover of British birds with three climatic variables: minimum temperature, growing degree-days and water balance. We modelled the proportions of species going locally extinct/recolonising as a function of their climatic means, variances, long-term trends, year to year autocorrelation and unusual events. Climatic means and variances both matter for turnover. 

Trends in species' status occupy a central role in biodiversity conservation. Volunteer-collected biological records represent a huge, but largely untapped, resource for estimating trends. I present computer simulations to compare several methods for estimating trends, under different scenarios of recorder behaviour. I derive rules of thumb for which methods to use, and apply them to hundreds of UK invertebrate species.

Mammals exhibit a range of energetic strategies, which vary with size, diet and environment, and which relate to their ecological niche.  Sufficient data now exist for these to be examined on global scales.  Preliminary analyses indicate latitudinal variations in energetic niches and body temperature, as well as a relationship between diet, latitude and energetics.

Roads interact with, and impact on, landscape ecology by affecting the connectivity and fragmentation of landscape components. Aerial photographs and Geographic Information System (GIS) were used to assess and quantify the impact of road construction on landscape ecology and diversity, in particular structure and composition, by comparing ‘roaded’ and ‘non-roaded’ landscapes in Ireland.

The MarClim time-series has demonstrated the fastest biogeographical range shifts of rocky intertidal species in response to climate warming globally.  Species-specific responses are altering macroecological clines in community structure across Europe.  Mesocosm experiments are linking molecular and physiological mechanistic responses of organisms to changes in sea temperature and pH, demonstrating how they drive poleward expansions or contractions of species distributions.

Using machine learning techniques, we present a model of the spatial distribution of abundance of the copepod Calanus finmarchicus in the North Sea. The model combines continuous plankton recorder and satellite derived data, in particular data on the intensity of oceanographic fronts, thus incorporating the mesoscale physical structure of the marine environment, an important determinant of passive aggregation of plankton.

Marine benthic biomass spectra are affected by biological and environmental factors, and may have the potential, with elements of taxonomy incorporated, to produce universal indicators of ecosystem status.This experimental study examines if body size distribution is related to sediment particle size to aid our understanding of the role of the body size spectra in benthic ecology.

Species in a food web are linked via trophic interactions whereas different habitat patches are linked via species dispersal. Both dynamics and their combination are topics of meta-community ecology. We hereby present a fully allometric model, in which all phylogenetic and dispersal parameters depend on population body masses. We link two patches with simple food-web motifs and than increase complexity.

Policymakers need to know how species will respond to climate change at the landscape level. To determine this we need to know what drives climate at this scale. Here, we test the ability of a number of measures of vegetation structure at explaining and predicting fine-scale temperature variation, and examine the implications for future climate and species distribution modelling.

To function properly green spaces in cities should be functionally connected. This study focuses on green space connectivity via an examination of bird movement through the cityscape and the ecologically valuable features of urban green spaces to birds. Using ringing data, movements of birds demonstrate the permeability of the city.

We study the relation between flowering synchronicity and the relative spatial position of individuals using a network approach. Here, individuals are connected if they overlap in flowering. Closely connected individuals form compartments in the network. Depending on pollination mode, we find significant spatial autocorrelation of compartment designation. Individuals that are spatially aggregated overlap intensely in flowering, possibly to facilitate cross-pollination.

When establishing themselves in different environments, bacteria exhibit a variety of weird and spectacular spatial dynamics. How these spatial dynamics are formed and how they offer an ecological benefit to the microbial colony are important yet relatively unexplored questions. Our findings show that colonies with irregular spatial dynamics have a greater ability to acquire resources compared to circular shaped colonies. 

We find that Indo-Pacific corals are assembled as distinct faunal provinces, delineated by faunal breaks where multiple species reach geographical range limits. Breaks exhibit little concordance with transitions in current environmental conditions. Instead, striking concordance with transitions between tectonic plates and mantle plume tracks implies historical processes drive this pattern.

I will present analyses of the first dated phylogeny of all extant species of birds. Avian diversification rates increase towards the present, driven by radiations that are interspersed throughout the tree. Geographic differences in diversification rates are hemispheric not latitudinal, with assemblages in Asia, North America and Southern South America containing a disproportionate number of species from recent rapid radiations.

Dispersal ability is thought to influence the extent of environmentally suitable habitat filled by the observed geographic range. In reality, 'range filling' is likely to be the result of both heritable traits and spatially related factors. We used two models, with differing evolutionary assumptions to tease apart drivers in observed patterns in range filling. 

Species distribution models (SDMs) describe the probability of occurrence for target species for a given site. We present a probabilistic framework behind such an approach and illustrate it with four very different data sets. Our results show that stacked SDMs are systematically biased in their estimation of species richness. Our framework uses macroecological models to constrain predictions for single species.