Christine Howard
Primarily my research focuses around understanding the drivers of population dynamics both spatially and temporally, with the goal of improving our knowledge on how to implement effective conservation strategies under various scenarios of environmental change. Prior to my PhD my studies concentrated on assessing the impacts of finer scale environmental change on avian populations, through both behavioural trade-offs and varying survival rates. For my PhD, I investigated the relative importance of climate and land use change for determining the recent population trends of breeding birds across Europe. I then moved on to work on a project with the USDA Forest Service to identify the environmental and anthropogenic correlates of rarity, to develop recommendations for conservation policy. I am now working with the British Trust for Ornithology to model the migratory journeys of Afro-Palearctic migratory birds to identify the drivers of current routes and the threats these species are exposed to during their annual migrations. Position: Assistant Professor in the Department of Biosciences
Membership: Behaviour, Ecology and Evolution Research (BEER) Centre, British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), British Ornithological Union (BOU), British Ecological Society (BES) Contact Details: Department of Biosciences, Durham University, South Road, Durham, DH1 3LE. Email: [email protected] Education
2011-2015 PhD Biology, Durham University & British Trust for Ornithology 2010-2011 MRes Environmental Biology, University of St Andrews & University of Dundee 2006-2010 BSc(hons) Ecology & Conservation, University of St Andrews Selected Publications
Howard, C., Marjakangas, EL., Morán-Ordóñez, A., et al (2023) Local colonisations and extinctions of European birds are poorly explained by changes in climate suitability Nature Communications 14 (1), 4304 Howard, C., Flather, C.H. & Stephens, P.A. (2020) A global assessment of the drivers of threatened terrestrial species richness. Nature Communications 11, 993. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-14771-6 Howard, C., Flather, C.H., and Stephens, P.A. (2018) What drives at-risk species richness? Environmental factors are more influential than anthropogenic factors or biological traits. Conservation Letters, 9: 172-180. doi:10.1111/conl.12196 Howard, C., Stephens, P.A., Tobias, J.A., Sheard, C., Butchart, S.H.M., & Willis, S.G., (2018) Flight range, fuel load, and the impact of climate change on the journeys of migrant birds Proc. R. Soc. B Biol. Sci.285 Howard, C., Stephens, P.A., Pearce-Higgins, J.W., Gregory, R.D. & Willis, S.G. Improving species distribution models: the value of data on abundance. Methods in Ecology and Evolution (DOI: 10.1111/2041-210X.12184) |
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