Advisory Board and Editors Biodiversity
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.
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.
Melanie L.J. Stiassny
Axelrod Research Curator of Fishes, Division of Vertebrate Zoology, and Professor, Richard Gilder Graduate School at the American Museum of Natural History.
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.
Armando Sunny
Dr. Armando Sunny is a Researcher and Professor within the Applied Biological Sciences Research Center, Science Faculty at the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico (UAEM).
He is interested to know how certain features of the landscape affect the genetic diversity and structure of species in anthropized environments, for this he performs analysis of landscape genetics, population genetics, niche modeling, SIG, landscape connectivity and global change analysis, especially in amphibians and reptiles.
Marcelino T Suzuki
I am from Brazil, where I obtained a degree in Oceanography from the Univ. do Rio Grande. I then finished a Masters and a PhD in Oceanography at Oregon State Univ under the co-supervision of Ev and Barry Sherr and Steve Giovannoni working on the effects of protist bacterivory on bacterioplankton community structure. Next I worked at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Inst. supervised by Ed DeLong on topics including the analysis of bacterioplankton (BP) diversity, the development of real-time PCR for genes and mRNAs, and BP metagenomics, and the biology of photoheterotrophs in the Ocean. I was hired as an Assistant Professor at the Chesapeake Biological Lab where I led research on the diversity, phylogeny and activity of BP, measurements of PB gene expression in situ biology and microbial processes leading to methylmercury production by bacteria.
Since May 2009, I am a Professor At the Observatoire Océanologique de Banyuls and the head of the Microbial Biodiversity and Biotechnology Unit and the Scientific advisor of the Bio2Mar platform of the OOB. I lead research on the biology of photoheterotrophs in the Ocean, and the ecology and genomics of, and the exploitation of, marine microorganisms for biotechnological purposes. My main interests are the connection betweem specific bacterioplankton activity and marine biogeochemical cycles, microbial biotechnology, the biology of photoheterotrophy, and chemical interactions of microbes in symbiosis.
Fabiano Thompson
Oceanographer and Professor of Marine Biology of the Institute of Biology and SAGE-COPPE of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). Our research group focuses mainly on marine microbiology.
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.
Robert J Toonen
Research professor of Marine Biology at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology in the School of Ocean & Earth Sciences & Technology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Piotr Tryjanowski
Professor of Biology and Director of the Institute of Zoology PULS. Previously at Adam Mickiewicz University Poznan.
Research interests: behavioural ecology, climate impact, farmland birds, urban ecology.
Cemal Turan
Cemal Turan is a Professor in the Department of Marine Sciences at Iskenderun Technical University, Turkey.
His primary research interests include Marine Biodiversity, Fisheries, Alien Species, Molecular Ecology and Biotechnology.
Jana M U'Ren
Assistant Professor, Department of Plant Pathology, Washington State University. PhD in Plant Pathology and Microbiology from The University of Arizona. Research focus on the ecology and evolution of fungal endophytes.