Advisory Board and Editors Conservation Biology

Journal Factsheet
A one-page PDF to help when considering journal options with co-authors
Download Factsheet
I told my colleagues that PeerJ is a journal where they need to publish if they want their paper to be published quickly and with the strict peer review expected from a good journal.
Sohath Vanegas,
PeerJ Author
View author feedback

Diaa Abd El-Moneim

Diaa Abd El Moneim received his Ph.D. in plant molecular genetics from Complutense University of Madrid- Spain, in 2012. Between 2012 and 2014, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the national biotechnology center – in Madrid –Spain. He joined the Deanship of preparatory year –at Jouf University – K.S.A. as an Assistant professor of Biology. Since 2020 he has served as an Associate professor of genetics at Arish University, which is responsible for Lecturing about advanced applications for plant molecular genetics; Organizing meetings and building relationships with national and international institutes; Supervising graduate/undergraduate researchers; and leading research projects in assessing cereals crops under the different abiotic stress. During his Ph.D. and postdoctoral studies, he was skilled with advanced molecular genetics techniques, which helped him study molecular breeding of cereals crops, particularly for abiotic stress tolerance. Generally, his research interests focused on the isolation and characterization of abiotic stress-responsive genes and proteins, physiological and molecular mechanisms of the abiotic stress response, and tolerance. Also, study intracellular signaling pathways required for plants to coordinate stress responses under various abiotic stresses.

Alfonso Aguilar-Perera

Dr. Alfonso Aguilar-Perera is Professor at Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, Mexico. He is a marine biologist focused on studying marine fish associated with coral reefs, in particular Groupers and Snappers, and more recently Lionfish, on the coasts of the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. He has also addressed the biological and ecological components of sea cucumbers, corals, and parasitic isopods of fishes.

Volker Bahn

I am an Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at Wright State University. Previously I was a postdoctoral fellow at McGill University working in Macroecology with Brian McGill. My PhD is from the University of Maine in Wildlife Ecology with advisers Bill Krohn and Raymond O'Connor, and MS (German Diplom) in Conservation Biology from Philipps University Marburg with Harald Plachter and Peter Poschlod, in collaboration with Alan Burger from University of Victoria.

Francisco Balao

Francisco Balao is associate lecture of Plant Biology at the University of Seville; Past post-doc Marie-Curie fellow in the Department of Plant Systematics at the University of Vienna.

Research interests are mainly focused on how plant genomes interact with its environment across ecological and evolutionary timescale. We try to elucidate the mechanistic bases of the biodiversity through studies of molecular phylogenetics and phylogenomics, phylogeography, cytogenetics, ecophysiology, transcriptomics and reproductive biology.

Anastazia T Banaszak

Research Professor at the Unidad Académica de Sistemas Arrecifales (Reef Systems Academic Unit) a campus of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México located in Puerto Morelos in the Mexican Caribbean. Her undergraduate education was at James Cook University, Townsville, Australia followed by her graduate degree at the University of California at Santa Barbara, USA and a postdoctoral appointment at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Maryland, USA.

Her research interests include the photobiology of phytoplankton, corals and coral reef dwelling-organisms as well as coral reproductive biology and ecology. Most recently, she has become involved in research on best practices for culturing coral species for use in restoration projects.

She is a topic editor for Coral Reefs, council member of the International Society for Reef Studies and serves on the scientific advisory boards for the Healthy Reefs Initiative and SECORE International and is on the steering committees of the Coral Restoration Consortium and the Meso-American Reef Restoration Group.

James Baxter-Gilbert

I am a Lecturer at Mount Allison University in Sackville, NB, Canada, where I teach a variety of biology and science communication courses. The central core of my research examines how anthropogenic landscapes and actions impact wildlife. Commonly my research examines how phenotypic change, triggered by urbanisation or biological invasion, may allow reptiles and amphibians the ability to meet the challenges of a human-dominated world.

I completed my BSc (Biology), GDip (Science Communication), and MSc (Biology) at Laurentian University. My MSc research examined: (1) the effectiveness of mitigation structures at reducing reptile road mortality while maintaining population connectivity and (2) developing techniques for evaluating chronic stress in reptiles relating to roads and traffic. I completed my PhD at Macquarie University, which examined how Australian Water Dragons were responding to anthropogenic habitats through urban-derived divergent phenotypes; testing behavioural, morphological, and physiology traits between urbanise and natural-living populations. I then when on to conduct postdoctoral research at Stellenbosch University in the Centre for Invasion Biology examining how biological invasion were impacting the behavioural, morphological, and physiology traits of Guttural Toads as they transition from native to invasive, and urban to natural habitats.

Renato Benesperi

Associate Professor at the Department of Biology of the University of Florence.

His main research activity focuses on ecology, diversity and systematic of lichens. Research topics include the assessment and management of impacts of human activities (e.g. forest management, invasive alien species, climate changes) on lichen and plant communities.

Patrick Bergeron

Patrick Bergeron is an associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Bishop's University

His research centers around questions about the ecology, physiology and evolution of vertebrates. Under this large umbrella, work is separated into three main projects, on
Chipmunks, Humans and Wood frogs.

Rüdiger Bieler

Curator (research professor) in the Integrative Research Center, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago and Member of the Committee on Evolutionary Biology, University of Chicago

Research interests include evolutionary systematics, biogeography, comparative morphology, and taxonomy, with special focus on marine Mollusca, especially Gastropoda and Bivalvia. As a “museum person,” he is particularly interested in the development and application of organismal, collections-based research, ranging from extensive new field surveys and large-scale specimen and data management issues, to the integration of morphological, paleontological, and molecular data to address biological research questions. He recently served as lead PI of the Bivalve Assembling-the-Tree-of-Life (BivAToL.org) effort and is involved in coral reef restoration projects and associated invertebrate surveys in the Florida Keys. Past offices include service as president of the American Malacological Society and of the International Society of Malacology (Unitas), and he currently a member of the steering committee of WoRMS (marinespecies.org) and a chief editor in the MolluscaBase.org effort.

Steven J Bograd

Dr. Steven Bograd is an oceanographer at NOAA’s Environmental Research Division in Monterey, California, and an Adjunct Faculty at the Department of Ocean Sciences, University of California-Santa Cruz. His research is focused on physical-biological interactions, eastern boundary current systems, climate variability, marine biologging, fisheries oceanography, and ecosystem-based management. He is currently involved in a number of research projects studying climate variability and its impacts on the marine ecosystems of the North Pacific Ocean. Steven was co-Principal Investigator of the Census of Marine Life’s Tagging of Pacific Predators (TOPP) program, and is currently an Editor-in-Chief at Fisheries Oceanography and co-chair of the PICES FUTURE Scientific Steering Committee. Steven received his PhD in Oceanography from the University of British Columbia in 1998, and held a post-doctoral fellowship at Scripps Institution of Oceanography before coming to NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center in 2001.

Alison G Boyer

Research scientist in the Environmental Sciences Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Chief Scientist of the ORNL Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC) since 2016. The ORNL DAAC provides data management, curation, and data disimmenation for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Terrestrial Ecology Program.

Joint Faculty Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

General research interests: global change ecology, biogeography, and biodiversity. Her research uses remote sensing data, machine learning, and other data science tools to understand the past and present interactions between human societies and ecological communities.

Laura A Brannelly

Laura Brannelly is an Senior Lecturer in One Health and Biostatistics, and and Australia Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Award Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Her current research project focuses on the effects of disease of reproduction in frogs, specifically in species of conservation concern. She hopes to be able to directly use the information generated from her research to further conservation efforts to protect Australia’s declining frog species.

Laura received her a Bachelor of Arts in anthropology and Bachelor of Science in ecology and evolutionary biology from Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana in 2010. She went on to complete her Masters of Science in environmental biology from Tulane University in 2011 where she participated in a number of amphibian projects including clinical chemotherapy trials for treating Bd.
Laura received her PhD at James Cook University in Townsville, Queensland Australia in 2016. For her PhD research she explored the interactions between frogs, disease, and the management of critically endangered species. She explored pathogenesis of disease on understudied and endangered species, as well as determining mechanisms of population persistence.
She completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh from 2016-2018, where she is investigated the interactions between frogs, chytrid fungal disease, and the environment: specifically, how climate change impacts these relationships.