Studies in Longitudinal Analysis of Population Persistence and Evolutionary Demography


We are a group of population biologists interested in conservation, population dynamics and bio-demography. Current projects in the group focus on:

  • Understanding factors associated with fluctuations in population size
  • Understanding how ecological change generates evolutionary change
  • Characterising the ecological consequences of evolutionary change
  • Characterising current and predicting future conflict between people and wildlife
  • Developing conservation and management strategies for populations and ecosystems
  • Developing methods to better monitor populations of cryptic species

To do this we:

  • Collect field data from sites in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas
  • Apply and develop statistical methods to gain insight from these data
  • Use these insights to develop new theory and to devise conservation and management strategies

We publish our work in the scientific literature, and sometimes get coverage in the national media. Publications of each group member can be found on their own pages, but recent highlights are:

Ozgul A, Childs DZ, Oli MK, Armitage KB, Blumstein DT, Olson LE, Tuljapurkar S, Coulson S (2010) Coupled dynamics of body mass and population growth in response to environmental change. Nature 466: 482:485

Rebke M, Coulson T, Becker PH, et al (2010) Reproductive improvement and senescence in a long-lived bird. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 107:7841-7846

Hart T, Coulson T, Trathan PN (2010) Time series analysis of biologging data: autocorrelation reveals periodicity of diving behaviour in macaroni penguins. Animal Behaviour 79:845-855

Ezard THG, Coulson T (2010) How sensitive are elasticities of long-run stochastic growth to how environmental variability is modelled? Ecological Modeling 221:191-200


Currently SLAPPED consists of Tim Coulson (Professor of Population Biology), Aurelio Malo (Postdoctoral Research Fellow), Arpat Ozgul (Postdoctoral Research Fellow), Isabel Smallegange (Postdoctoral Research Fellow), Tom Hart (PhD thesis submitted), Joe Smith (PhD thesis submitted), Patrick Aust (PhD thesis submitted), Christos Mammedes (PhD student), Anna Songhurst (PhD student), Kevin Wallace (PhD student), Norman George (PhD student), Tola Oni (PhD student) and Harry Marshall (PhD student). Details for former group members are also available.

If you are interested in joining out team or working with us click here.


Latest News

 

 

3 April 2010