Advisory Board and Editors Ecosystem Science
Mar Sobral
Spanish Evolutionary Ecologist. Formerly at Stanford (US) and CNRS (France). Now at USC (Spain).
My research looks at the evolutionary ecology of plant-animal interactions and the impact of global change on biodiversity, particularly regarding ecosystem functions and services such as carbon storage.
Isabel Sousa Pinto
Professor at the University of Porto and researcher at Ciimar: Centre for Marine and Environmental Research. She has a PhD in seaweed ecology, ecophysiology and cultivation from the University of California Santa Barbara. Her main research is in biodiversity and ecology of benthic communities and the biology, cultivation and use of seaweeds and she is the Head of the Laboratory of Coastal Biodiversity. She is also member of the Steering/Executive Committees of several international and European programs as: EPBRS - European Platform for Biodiversity Research Strategy, MABEFF+ – European Institute for the study of Marine Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning, MARS - European Network of Marine Research Institutes and Stations, EMBOS - Development and implementation of a pan-European Marine Biodiversity Observatory System, and co-chair of the Working group on Marine Ecosystem Change from GEO BON – Biodiversity Observation Network and in the Portuguese delegation to the UN Convention for Biological Diversity
Johannie M. Spaan
Dr. Johannie Spaan is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific Northwest (Western University of Health Sciences). Her research interests focus on stress physiology, disease ecology, eco-immunology and parasitology.
More specifically, Dr. Spaan's research within the Steinauer lab is focused on a neglected tropical disease, Schistosomiasis, a helminth infection that affects over 200 million people. Research carried out within the lab focuses on uncovering potential mechanisms that can be manipulated to break the life cycle of this pathogen in order to reduce or eliminate schistosome transmission to humans.
In addition to this, Dr. Spaan is also involved in a project investigating the effect of schistosome infections in a mouse model system and the links among parasite infection, behavioral and cognitive changes, microbiome alteration, and systemic inflammation.
Heidi Steltzer
Environmental scientist, explorer and science storyteller. She researchers how environmental changes affect mountain watersheds and the Arctic system, and their links to human well-being. She is an Associate Professor of Biology, Fort Lewis College. She is on the leadership team for Homeward Bound, an organization developing leadership for women in STEM. Founder of the Colorado Mountain Center. member American Geophysical Union.
Gavin B Stewart
Gavin is interested in applied research synthesis (combining scientific information to inform policy). Primary interests are meta-analysis and Bayesian belief networks. He has a deep mislike of P values much preferring effect sizes and confidence intervals, or better still probabilities of direct relevance to decision-making. Gavin's work on meta-analysis spans applied agriculture, food, rural development, ecology and medicine reflecting a belief in generic methods for Evidence Based X (EBX).
I am an elected member of the Society for Research Synthesis Methods and associate editor of its journal, Research Synthesis Methods. I am also associate editor for PeerJ and statistical editor for the Cochrane Pain and Palliative Care Group. I’m a member of the National Centre for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis Meta-analysis Working Group and co-author of the Handbook of Meta-analysis in ecology and evolution. I am also co-chair and editor of a new Campbell Collaboration Food Security group.
Katharine L Stuble
Plant Biologist at The Holden Arboretum. Research focuses on the ecological impacts of global climate change and species invasions.
Our lab researches the basic mechanisms underlying the maintenance of diversity within communities, as well as how global change may alter these communities and the services they provide. We focus on two main drivers of global change: climatic warming and species invasions with a particular focus on how global change is altering interspecific interactions ranging from competition to mutualisms.
Andrea Sundermann
Primary research interests: Effects of stream restoration on aquatic organisms, dispersal of aquatic insects, environmental factors controlling establishment of aquatic organisms in near natural, restored and degraded rivers, threshold values of physico-chemical variables controlling benthic invertebrate occurrences.
Jonathan D Tonkin
My research is focused around what promotes and maintains biodiversity at a range of spatial scales. Much of my work focuses on stream ecosystems, but my interests are question focused, not system specific. While my central interest lies in disentangling the mechanisms that structure metacommunities, I also tackle questions ranging from local to global, and from community ecology through to macroecology. I focus on a variety of basic ecological concepts and processes, including linkages between disturbance, productivity and diversity, biodiversity loss, ecosystem function, dispersal, and community assembly. I also aim to tackle applied ecological issues such as global change, land-use change, river regulation, and restoration, with the goal of applying ecological theory to effectively manage threatened ecosystems. My current research ties these issues together into the following three main themes: 1) Metacommunity ecology; 2) Global change ecology and macroecology; and 3) Restoration ecology. In light of these three themes, I am particularly focusing on the unique hierarchical and dendritic structure of river networks, and how this structure influences the biodiversity patterns of river communities.
Andrew Tredennick
I am a quantitative ecologist interested in ecological forecasting and the stability of populations, communities, and ecosystems. I have expertise in statistical analyses of ecological systems, population modeling, and the analysis of remote sensing data to address environmental problems.
Eeva-Stiina Tuittila
I research the carbon dynamics of peatlands. Specifically this addresses the impact of climate change on the functioning of the ecosystem, greenhouse gas emissions and vegetation.
Sara Varela
I am working on Pleistocene mammal extinctions. Co-developer of R packages to download data from open access databases (rAvis and paleobioDB), and team member of www.ecoClimate.org, an open access repository to access climatic data for the past, present and future.
Claudio Vasapollo
I am a marine biologist working as a fishery and benthic researcher at the Institute for Marine Resources and Biotechnologies (IRBIM) of the National Researche Council (CNR) in Ancona, Italy. I held my PhD in 2010 at the The Open University (Milton Keynes, UK) working at the Stazione Zoologica A. Dohrn of Naples (Italy) where I conducted a study on the spatial and temporal distribution of macro benthic assemblages associated to Posidonia oceanica seagrass and on several features of the plant itself. I got a Master degree in 2005 at the Polytechnic University of Marche after the Bachelor's degree in Marine Biology at the same university in 2004. I participated in several surveys at sea in the last years as well as to several diving expeditions in the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean Sea.