Accurately predicting how climate change and human pressures will affect vulnerable species is essential for enabling regulatory bodies to anticipate and mitigate potential negative effects. Yet many existing models lack the mechanistic realism needed to support decision-making, forcing regulators to choose between precautionary action and managing unintended consequences after policies are implemented.
This challenge is especially acute in marine systems, where many large predator species are already declining due to the combined effects of climate change and escalating human pressures, including industrial fishing and expanding marine infrastructure. Because marine ecosystems are difficult to monitor at relevant spatial and temporal scales, large predators, such as seabirds, seals, tunas and sharks, are widely used as bioindicator species. Understanding the processes driving population change in these species therefore provides critical insight into the wider health and functioning of our oceans.
Our research addresses two core themes:
1. Understanding the processes driving population change
We use advanced statistical and quantitative approaches to understand how marine bioindicator species respond to environmental change across space and time. By integrating demographic, movement, diet, and experimental data, we identify the key mechanisms that regulate population dynamics.
2. Developing tools to assess climate and human impacts
We develop innovative methods to assess species and populations, particularly in data-limited systems. This work directly informs conservation and management, including the sustainable management of Southern Ocean krill fisheries and environmental impact assessments for offshore renewable energy developments in the UK.
Ongoing projects:
Connectivity, resilience, and metapopulation persistence in marine species
Examining how environmental variability and human pressures shape spatiotemporal population dynamics and resilience in seabirds to develop mechanistic models that predict how these bioindicator species respond to environmental change.
Procellariiform Behaviour and Demographics (ProcBe):
Improving understanding of the at-sea behaviour, distribution, and demography of UK procellariiform seabirds, including Manx shearwaters and European and Leach’s storm-petrels.
Year-round habitat use of North Atlantic black-legged kittiwakes
Quantifying migratory connectivity at the metapopulation scale to support new assessment tools and conservation action.
PhD student Vance Mak.
Drivers of population change in tropical seabirds breeding in Seychelles
Identifying the processes underlying population declines in tropical seabird species.
PhD student Thalissa Inch.
Join my group: I welcome enquiries about PhD and postdoctoral opportunities in my research group.
Image: Colony of common guillemots by Sam Langlois Lopez