Advisory Board and Editors Biodiversity
Simon Man Kit Cheung
Dr. Cheung is a Senior Research Associate of the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol. He is a microbial ecologist specialized in using molecular and bioinformatics techniques to examine the dynamics, determinants and roles of microbial communities in natural and host-associated environments.
Claudia Colesie
I obtained my Diploma in 2009 in the group of Prof. Burkhard Büdel, at the University of Kaiserslautern. For my doctoral work, I joined an international collaboration within a New Zealand research project under the leadership of Prof. T.G. Allan Green and Prof. Craig Cary; NZTabs; both at University of Waikato. After finishing my PhD thesis I continued working in the group of Burkhard Büdel as a lecturer with the opportunity to additionally join a trans-European BioDiversa project.
As a direct consequence from these experiences I learned that tundra ecosystems, where low temperatures and short growing seasons limit tree growth but water availability is high, are highly productive soil crusts habitats. I, therefore, collaborated in the POLARCRUST project that focused on biological soil crusts from the Antarctic Peninsula and Arctic Svalbard coordinated by Ulf Karsten, University of Rostock, Germany. In addition, I started my project as an Alexander-von Humboldt research fellow within the group of Prof. Vaughan Hurry at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Umeå. Additionally, I am currently involved in a research Project (CRYPTOCOVER), with Prof. Leopoldo Sancho (Universidad Complutense Madrid, Spain.I will start working as a lecturer for plant physiological ecology at the University of Edinburgh with the School of Geosciences in the Climate change Institute from January 2019.
Timothy M Collins
Full Professor and former Chair of the Department of Biological Sciences at Florida International University. Director of FIU DNA Core facility. Past Program Director for NSF Division of Environmental Biology, Systematics and Biodiversity Cluster.
Research interests include: Molecular Systematics, Evolution, Biogeography, and Phylogeography: Rates, patterns, and mechanisms of molecular evolution , including nucleotide sequence evolution and mitochondrial gene order change, and consequences for phylogenetic reconstruction and reconstruction of ancestral states. Integration of molecular data with paleontological and morphological data. Using phylogenies to address biological questions.
Stéphane Compant
Stéphane Compant (PhD. Reims, France 2007; Associate Professor of Microbiology at the National Polytechnic Institute of Toulouse in France since 2009; Sabbathical years since 2012; Project leader/Scientist at AIT Austrian Institute of Technology since 2012; Habilitation in 2017 at University of Bordeaux/Bordeaux Sciences Agro) has coordinated several research and training programmes for national and international agencies. He is a leading research expert in microbial ecology of endophytic bacteria and fungi interacting with plants, beneficial or not. He also works on beneficial plant-microbe interactions in general, and biocontrol of plant diseases using various biocontrol agents from different sources. Stéphane Compant was a member of the Management Committee France, as well as a STSM member on European cost action FA1103. He also represented Austria on European cost action FA1303, co-chair of microbial ecology, EIP-Agri Pests and Diseases in Viticulture, and serves on various review committees and scientific journal boards.
Anne Conan
Dr. Anne Conan is a veterinary epidemiologist. Her main research topic is the epidemiology of infectious diseases in low-income farming systems, including the consequences of the intensification of chicken farming, the epidemiology of African swine fever , the epidemiology of Coxiella burnetii in humans and livestock, and the control of rabies in humans and dogs. She has worked in Cambodia, South Africa, St. Kitts (West Indies) and Hong Kong SAR. She is now based in Zimbabwe studying the topics of One Health and of the surveillance of infectious diseases.
Erik E Cordes
Dr. Erik Cordes is a Professor and the Vice Chair of Biology at Temple University. He has worked on the ecology of deep-sea corals and hydrocarbon seeps for over 20 years. He studies these ecosystems at all levels of organization, from energy flow in ecosystems and patterns of community assembly, down to gene expression and microbial processes. Dr. Cordes worked on deep-sea corals for his Master’s thesis at Moss Landing Marine Labs, worked on cold-seep ecology for his Ph.D. at Penn State University, and studied the microbial communities within hydrothermal vent chimneys during his NSF Post-Doctoral Fellowship at Harvard. At Temple, his lab has continued to explore the deep Gulf of Mexico while working on the effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on deep-sea coral communities and the effects of ocean acidification on the reef-forming deep-sea coral Lophelia pertusa. Ongoing investigations in the Cordes lab include the seeps and corals off the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, the deep-sea corals of the Phoenix Islands, and the various deepwater habitats of the Atlantic coast of the US.
Guilherme N Corte
Dr. Guilherme Corte is a Professor (Assistant) at the Texas A&M University College of Marine Sciences and Maritime Studies, USA. His research explores the ecology and conservation of coastal marine ecosystems, focusing on the structure of marine benthic communities, the functioning of coastal ecosystems, and the reproduction and population dynamics of marine species.
Federica Costantini
Dr. Federica Costantini is a marine ecologist and associate professor at the University of Bologna, Italy.
Her primary research includes biodiversity conservation and resource management using integrative tools based on morphology and genetics.
Richard M Cowling
Professor of Plant Palaeoscience. Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) and founding member of the Academy of Sciences of South Africa. Former President of the International Society of Mediterranean Ecologists and former Editor-in-Chief of Conservation Letters.
Joseph M Craine
Craine received his BS from The Ohio State University and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 2000. He has co-authored over 100 peer-reviewed scientific publications and a book with Princeton University Press, The Resource Strategies of Wild Plants. He has worked on a variety of topics from plant traits to soil organic matter dynamics to bison performance to nutrient limitation of plant growth. Since 2014 he has helped lead a private company Jonah Ventures.
Alastair Culham
Associate Professor of Botany and Curator of the University of Reading Herbarium (RNG).
Regina L Cunha
I am interested in integrating phylogeographic and molecular approaches to infer evolutionary processes that explain current patterns of genetic diversity in marine organisms, particularly on isolated oceanic islands. I have worked on natural populations of marine snails from Cape Verde to address problems of speciation and geographic variation and to analyse the influence of historical processes, as the effect of sea-level changes on the genetic structure of organisms. Currently, I am interested in the identification of gamete recognition proteins involved in reproductive incompatibilities and their role in the evolution of non-geographic barriers that, ultimately, may generate sympatric divergence.