Dr Eleanor Slade

Postdoctoral researcher (University of Helsinki)

Spatial Foodweb Ecology Group, University of Helsinki (http://www.helsinki.fi/foodwebs/Eleanor.htm)

For a full list of Publications please click here: http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=zuhl3kAAAAAJ&hl=en

I joined the WildCRU in 2008 as a Postdoctoral Researcher and Earthwatch Program Co-ordinator, working on a four year research programme to look at the effects of climate change on the UK's fragmented woodlands. The project was a partnership between WildCRU, the Environmental Change Institute (ECI), CEH and Earthwatch and was designed specifically to maximise opportunities for benefitting, and benefitting from, 'citizen scientists'. The volunteers assisted with studies on a diverse range of animal taxa, from small mammals to woodlice and moths and millipedes, to understand the linkages between animals and the ECI's complementary research on fundamental carbon dynamics in the woodland, and how these might be affected by fragmentation and climate change.

My current research in Finland aims to quantify the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in modified landscapes. In particular, I am exploring the relationship between decreased dung beetle diversity and ecosystem functioning in agricultural landscapes.  I am also involved in the Stability of Altered Forest Ecosystems (SAFE) project (http://www.safeproject.net/) in Borneo, where I am undertaking research on the effects of fragmentation and oil palm expansion on dung beetle diversity and ecosystem functioning in collaboration with Dr Owen Lewis (Department of Zoology, University of Oxford) (http://www.zoo.ox.ac.uk/staff/academics/lewis_ot.htm) and Darren Mann (Oxford University Museum of Natural History) (http://www.oum.ox.ac.uk/collect/entom1.htm).

My DPhil research focused on the effects of selective logging on a number of taxa and ecosystem processes, including dipterocarp seed predation and seedling herbivory, predation of insect herbivores by birds and ants, and dung removal experiments using dung beetles as a model organism to look at the effects of manipulating diversity on ecosystem functioning. My fieldwork was undertaken in Belize, Central America and Sabah, Malaysian Borneo.

I have been involved co-ordinating the IUCN's Sampled Red List Index for butterflies and dung beetles, and I am an active member of ScarabNet , an international group of dung beetle taxonomists, ecologists and systematists working together to conserve scarabaeine dung beetles and support their use as an invertebrate focal taxon for biodiversity study and conservation. I spent several years conducting research on the forests, butterflies and birds of the Philippines. I worked as a Project Scientist on the NRCP (Negros Rainforest Conservation Project) of Coral Cay Conservation and NFEFI (Negros Forests and Ecological Foundation Inc.), and as a researcher on the rehabilitation and release programme for the Visayan Tarictic Hornbill of the Philippine Endemic Species Conservation Project, Panay.

I teach on the Oxford undergraduate Tropical Ecology field course in Borneo, give tutorials in tropical forest ecology and management, and supervise undergraduate and MSc projects.

I am broadly interested in the ecology and conservation of tropical and temperate forest ecosystems, and the impact of human activities (climate change, fragmentation, timber extraction) on the diversity and functioning of these ecosystems. I have worked on a range of taxa from dung beetles, moths and woodlice to hornbills and small mammals in both tropical (Malaysia, Philippines, Belize) and temperate (UK, Finland) environments.