Orchid collecting in SW Madagascar: me & Hanta Razafindraibe (PBZT)

About David Roberts

I am interested in a wide variety of questions, both theoretical and empirical, relating to biodiversity and conservation biology. Most of my research focuses on questions of species detectability and extinction, and orchid ecology; in particular the response of orchids to climate change, epiphyte community ecology and modelling epiphyte seed dispersal.

In pursuit of these goals, I have travelled widely, focusing on study systems in the western Indian Ocean islands and Africa. Although I am primarily an "orchid" person, I have worked on a diverse range of taxa including, ants, the dodo, mammoths and the North Atlantic Right Whale.

News!

In a recent paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, my co-authors, Lucas Joppa and Stuart Pimm, and I, estimate that 10-20% flowering plants are left to be discovered. We go on to show that these are likely to be found in biodiversity hotspots which are by definition threatened through habitat destruction. If we then add to these the 20% of plant species currently described we know to be threatened, then we get a figure of 27-33% of the total flowering plant species being threatend with with extinction. Click here for the press release.

Great news, Lin Taylor, an intern/sandwich student in my lab, won first prize for her poster at the Student Conference on Conservation Science, University of Cambridge, in March 2010. Her poster was on "How does sampling bias affect our accumulation of knowledge about a species?: A case study of Madagascan orchids".

On the 1st January 2010 I left the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, to take up a position as lecturer in Biodiversity Conservation at the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology, University of Kent, in Canterbury.

Prof Stuart Pimm from Duke University recently discovered he has the electronic rights for his environmental book, "The World According to Pimm." Download a free copy here! pdf (9.2Mb)