Biodiversity Institute

This research programme ran from 2007 - 2015 and the following pages are an archived resource. Oxford University continues working on biodiversity issues with The Biodiversity Network as its focal point.

the project

The Biodiversity Institute takes a lead in the science of biodiversity and also develops frameworks, structures and novel technologies to implement this science into management and policy.

The planet's biodiversity is under threat and experiencing radical changes at a rate unprecedented in history.

Our focus on biodiversity beyond protected areas and our integration of new technologies will help businesses and society develop best practices to conserve biodiverse ecosystems into the next century.

The Institute has three key themes:

Ecological and evolutionary processes: We focus on increasing the understanding of which ecological and evolutionary processes are important for creating the right conditions for resilience, persistence and the prevention of thresholds and irreversible changes in ecosystems. We also research how sensitive they are to environmental changes over short and long time-scales and how to devise policies to conserve them.

Biodiversity beyond protected areas: Climate change and human impact are putting increasing pressure on existing protected areas and as a result, biodiversity conservation needs to take place beyond these reserves. We aim to address the lack of scientific research into the processes and mechanisms that could enable these areas to support biodiverse ecosystems into the next century.

Biodiversity technologies: We aim to develop automated tools that enable easy identification of species and the assessment of important regions for biodiversity conservation beyond protected areas. We are also developing web-based tools that can map dynamic features of any landscape in the world to inform on the important ecosystem properties and functions that it supports.

publications

201505 Nature Plants

Asiatic cotton can generate similar economic benefits to Bt cotton under rainfed conditions

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201506 Timos Papadopoulos NS

Detecting bird sound in unknown acoustic background using crowdsourced training data

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Environmental Evidence logo crop

How effective are on-farm conservation land management strategies for preserving ecosystem services in developing countries? A systematic map protocol

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Nature Communications

Recovery and resilience of tropical forests after disturbance

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Species Coexistence

Species coexistence and the dynamics of phenotypic evolution in adaptive radiation

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PNAS Seddon

Species interactions and the structure of complex communication networks

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Sexualselection

Sexual selection accelerates signal evolution during speciation in birds

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PNAS

Predicting forest expansion into alpine areas

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Nature

Changes in global nitrogen cycling during the Holocene epoch

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Evolution

Evolutionary divergence in acoustic signals: causes and consequences

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Tropical Ecology

The role of earthworms in nitrogen and solute retention

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Biofuels Africa

Biofuels in Africa

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Biofuels Gasp

Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts of Biofuels

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Current biology

Life changes as polar regions thaw

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Bioconservation

The resilience of tropical forests

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Nature

Eurasian Arctic greening

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Biology Lettersl logo

Fungal litter-trapping in tropical rainforests

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Bio

Impacts of oil palm expansion on environmental change

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Bio

Spermless males and malaria transmission

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Biodiversity

Stochastic spread of Wolbachia

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Biodiversity

The population genetics of using homing endonuclease genes (HEGs) in vector & pest management