Advisory Board and Editors Ecosystem Science
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.
Khawaja Shafique Ahmad
Dr. Shafique Ahmad is an Associate Professor at the University of Poonch Rawalakot, Pakistan. The focus of his research group is to investigate the complex interactions between plants and their environment.
Dr. Ahmad's group studies plant physiological and biogeochemical responses under abiotic stresses to natural environmental variation and to global and regional environmental changes in natural ecosystems, with research focusing on fundamental aspects of plant growth, structural and physiological responses to environmental stress and climate change, and production of secondary metabolites. In addition to this, their research is also focused on how climate change, environmental pollution and soil properties affect plants and terrestrial ecosystems.
Tracy D Ainsworth
I am a senior research fellow studying marine organism responses to environmental change based at James Cook University in ARC Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. I undertook my PhD at the University of Queensland where my thesis investigated links between stress and disease in reef building corals. My research encompasses coral biology, microbial ecology, molecular biology, and I utilize a whole organism/ whole system approach to understanding change in marine systems.
Paul A Ayayee
Dr. Paul Ayayee is an Assistant Professor of Biology within the Department of Biology at the University of Nebraska. His research interests include Insect-gut microbe interactions, Insect physiology and microbial ecology
Thomas Backhaus
Professor for Ecotoxicology and Environmental Sciences at the University of Gothenburg, with a main interest in regulatory (eco)toxicology and risk assessment of complex exposure situations.
Donald J Baird
Research Scientist in the Water Science & Technology Directorate of Environment and Climate Change Canada, Visiting Research Professor in the Biology Department at the University of New Brunswick and Science Director of the Canadian Rivers Institute.
His primary research interests include the study of watershed patterns in aquatic biodiversity and the influence of landscape stressors on resident biota. Current research concerns freshwater invertebrates, with dragonflies as a particular focus. He has previously worked on a variety of taxa groups from flatworms to fish, and in a variety of habitats from wetlands, lakes and rivers to coastal marine systems.
Teri Balser
Professor Teri Balser is Dean of Teaching and Learning for the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Curtin University, where she came after having been Dean of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at the University of Florida. She received a Ph.D. in soil microbiology came from the University of California at Berkeley, and she completed postdoctoral research in ecosystem ecology at Stanford University. She is a Fellow of the Soil Science Society of America, and was recently named to the Australian Research Council College of Experts.
Her research centers on understanding microbial community-level ecophysiological responses to stress, disturbance, and change, and the consequences of these for ecosystem functioning. She has worked in countries worldwide studying restoration, carbon sequestration, invasive species, biodiversity, and land use/land cover.
In addition to international recognition as an accomplished research scholar, Dr. Balser is widely known in higher education as a change agent and leader in Science, Technology Engineering and Math education (STEM). She is a co-founder of the Society for Advancement of Biology Education Research (SABER), a National Vision and Change Fellow with the Partnership for Undergraduate Life Sciences Education (PULSE), and was a Fulbright-Nehru Distinguished Chair to India in 2015 to help build capacity at the national level for pedagogically advanced and responsive STEM education.
Michael Beman
The overarching goal of my research program is to develop a predictive understanding of microbial ecology and biogeochemistry in the ‘Anthropocene’ sea. My research sits at the interface of microbial ecology, biogeochemistry, and global change science, and I work worldwide in reefs and estuaries, marine lakes and mountain lakes, and the open ocean. I focus on the responses of microbial communities, and the processes mediated by these communities, to environmental change—including climate change, ocean acidification, and ocean deoxygenation.
I received a B.S. from Yale University and a Ph.D. from Stanford in Geological and Environmental Sciences; before joining the UC Merced faculty in 2009, where I was a postdoc in Marine Environmental Biology at USC, a lecturer at UCLA, and an Assistant Researcher at the University of Hawai’i. I am an Associate Professor and member of the Sierra Nevada Research Institute and the Environmental Systems and Quantitative and Systems Biology graduate groups.
Angelo F Bernardino
PhD in Biological Oceanography and Associate Professor of Oceanography at Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, Brazil. Interested in Marine Biology, Marine Ecology, Deep-Sea Biology and Conservation, Estuarine ecology, Biological Oceanography, Climate change impacts on marine ecosystems.
Punyasloke Bhadury
I study microbial complexity (biocomplexity) across coastal oceans to understand how ocean geochemistry has shaped plasticity and consequences for key ecosystem processes such as carbon and nitrogen cycling. I am particularly interested to address the link between land-ocean-atmosphere in shaping microbial complexity across oceanic realms. I also have keen interests in metazoan biogeography, biomonitoring of aquatic ecosystems and elucidating resilience in microbes. I use geochemical, microscopy and molecular tools (e.g. eDNA, genomics) to address these questions.
Trine Bilde
Professor in Evolutionary Biology at the Department of Biology at Aarhus University in Denmark.
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.