Dr Richard Davies

Biography

Lecturer in Biodiversity in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of East Anglia.

Research Interest

My research interests are in the evolutionary and ecological determinants of biodiversity distribution at different spatial scales, from local to global, and how understanding of pattern and process can inform conservation policy. Environmental gradients of interest include energy availability, climatic stability, habitat complexity and heterogeneity. Human impacts I focus on include local-scale habitat disturbance and fragmentation through to large-scale influences of human population density and climate change. In addition to studying the distribution of species numbers, I am interested in using alternative biodiversity metrics such as functional diversity to better understand the functional contributions of species to communities. I work on a variety of taxa including insects and birds. My research spans local field studies as well as analyses of landscape-scale and macroecological data. While current projects are mainly large-scale and using existing data, future plans include field-based studies aimed at understanding species environmental tolerances, local drivers of community functional structure, and the influence of these and other factors on occupancy of species geographical ranges.