Staff profile

I am a macroecologist, principally interested in understanding the ecological and evolutionary drivers of large-scale patterns in biodiversity, identifying the potential impacts of environmental change on these patterns, and using this evidence to find solutions to the current global biodiversity crisis. My research to date has explored how climate and land use change has driven changes in the populations of European breeding birds, the environmental and anthropogenic correlates of rare and threatened species occurrence, and the development of individual based models of long-distance migratory behaviour. I often work with external organisations including the British Trust for Orntihology, USDA Forest Service, RSPB, and Birdlife International. I graduated in Ecology and Conservation from St. Andrews, took an MRes. in Environmental Biology at the universities of St Andrews and Dundee and gained a PhD in macroecology from Durham University.   

Journal Article

• Border, J. A., Boersch‐Supan, P. H., Pearce‐Higgins, J. W., Hewson, C. M., Howard, C., Stephens, P. A., Willis, S. G., Houston, A. I., Gargallo, G., & Baillie, S. R. (2024). Spatial variation in spring arrival patterns of Afro‐Palaearctic bird migration across Europe. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 33(7), Article e13850. https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.13850
• Howard, C., Marjakangas, E.-L., Morán-Ordóñez, A., Milanesi, P., Abuladze, A., Aghababyan, K., Ajder, V., Arkumarev, V., Balmer, D. E., Bauer, H.-G., Beale, C. M., Bino, T., Boyla, K. A., Burfield, I. J., Burke, B., Caffrey, B., Chodkiewicz, T., Del Moral, J. C., Mazal, V. D., Fernández, N., …Willis, S. G. (2023). Local colonisations and extinctions of European birds are poorly explained by changes in climate suitability. Nature Communications, 14(1), Article 4304. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-39093-1
• Gregory, R., Eaton, M. A., Burfield, I., Grice, P. V., Howard, C., Klvaňová, A., Stephens, P., Willis, S., Woodward, I. D., & Burns, F. (2023). Drivers of the changing abundance of European birds at two spatial scales. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 378(1881), Article 20220198. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2022.0198
• Howard, C., Mason, T. H. E., Baillie, S. R., Border, J., Hewson, C. M., Houston, A. I., Pearce‐Higgins, J. W., Bauer, S., Willis, S. G., & Stephens, P. A. (2023). Explaining and predicting animal migration under global change. Diversity and Distributions, 30(2), Article e13797. https://doi.org/10.1111/ddi.13797
• Mason, T. H., Stephens, P. A., Gilbert, G., Green, R. E., Wilson, J. D., Jennings, K., Allen, J. R., Huntley, B., Howard, C., & Willis, S. G. (2021). Using indices of species’ potential range to inform conservation status. Ecological Indicators, 123, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2021.107343