Thomas Mattern

PeerJ Author

Summary

Marine ecologist with research emphasis on behaviour of seabirds. 15 years of experience in planning, leading and executing field work and research projects in New Zealand and Chile. Research focus on foraging & spatial ecology, demography and population dynamics, personality traits of seabirds. Further research interest development of novel analysis methods and software tools to handle large data sets (‘big data’) via cloud-based computing solutions and crowdsourcing.

Animal Behavior Bioinformatics Computational Biology Conservation Biology Databases Ecology Ecosystem Science Environmental Sciences Marine Biology Programming Languages Scientific Computing & Simulation Zoology

Past or current institution affiliations

University of Otago

Work details

Research Fellow

University of Otago

am a movement ecologist and for the past 20 years have been applying various bio-logging and wildlife telemetry technologies to study the at-sea behaviour of seabirds. My work also encompasses demography and population dynamics as well as physiological consequences of human disturbance on wildlife. I focus primarily on New Zealand penguins and have worked with all our endemic species but have also contributed to other seabird research in South America, Australia, Antarctica, and the Russian Arctic. Together with my wife Ursula Ellenberg I lead the Tawaki Project (www.tawaki-project.org), a long-term study of Fiordland penguins/tawaki and other crested penguins. I am also the chair of the charitable Tawaki Trust which aims at improving our understanding and conservation of New Zealand's crested penguin species.

Global Penguin Society

January 2015