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School of Geography and the Environment

University of Oxford
School of Geography and the Environment

 School of Geography and the Environment

Professor Robert J. Whittaker

Academic Profile

Rob Whittaker has a BSc in Botany and Geography from the University of Hull (1980), an MSc in Ecology from University College North Wales (1982), and a doctorate from University College Cardiff (1985), where he studied vegetation succession on recently deglaciated terrain, in the Jotunheimen, Norway. He joined the Oxford School of Geography and the Environment in 1986, having previously worked for a year as a research officer at Birkbeck College, London. In 1990 he was appointed to a university lectureship and a fellowship at St Edmund Hall. In 1999 he was awarded the title of Reader and, in 2004, Professor of Biogeography.

Rob has published over 80 peer-review articles and is also the author of Island Biogeography: ecology, evolution, and conservation (OUP, first edition 1998; second edition 2007). Recently collaborations within Rob's research group have included two Marie Curie fellows (Dr Miguel Araújo and Dr Kostas Triantis) and three Rhodes Scholars (Dr Niall O'Dea, Dr Ben Sharp and Dr James Watson).

From 1995 to 2004 Rob was the editor-in-chief of Global Ecology & Biogeography - a journal of macroecology, and in mid-2004 he became editor-in-chief of the Journal of Biogeography, the leading international journal of biogeography. Rob is a founding member of the International Biogeography Society, was a Director-at-Large from 2005-2006, was co-convener of the biennial meeting, Tenerife 9-13 January 2007, and is President Elect for the period 2007-2009.

Rob Whittaker was appointed to an Honorary Professorship in Macroecology and Climate at the Department of Biology, University of Copenhangen from July 2008 for a five year term.

Current Research

Rob is a founding member of the School of Geography and the Environment's Biodiversity research cluster. His research interests span diverse themes within ecological biogeography and ecology, including: conservation biogeography, spatial scale, species diversity theory, climatic controls on species richness, species richness-productivity relationships, macroecology, and island biogeography. He is also an authority on the ecology of the Krakatau Islands, Indonesia, which provide a classic case study of ecosystem recovery in the tropics involving studies of both forest dynamics and island biogeography and their inter-relationships.

Rob's research interests have generated working links with scientists in several countries, including colleagues at the Universities of Oslo, Bergen (Norway), La Laguna (Spain), Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium), at the Herbarium Bogoriense (Indonesia), the Natural History Museum, London (UK) and the Spanish Museum of Natural History. Rob's work with Eileen M. O'Brien (Georgia), Richard Field (Nottingham), Miguel Araújo (Madrid) and Kathy Willis (School of Geography and the Environment) on the enigma of the so-called latitudinal gradients in species diversity have resulted in a number of influential publications, emphasising the critical importance of accounting for spatial and temporal scale in theory and analysis of species richness patterns.

Since about 2001, work undertaken by Rob and his students and collaborators within the biodiversity research group has increasingly focused on conservation science, with contributions to understanding the effects of ecosystem transformation on avifaunal assemblages in Ecuador, Madagascar and Australia and on savanna vegetation dynamics in Northern Australia, analyses of matrix effects in fragmented landscapes; and critical analyses of the application of climate envelope modelling to species distributional dynamics in the light of climate change. Much of this work was featured in a 2005 paper published in Diversity and Distributions, presenting a framework and research agenda for Conservation Biogeography as a key field within conservation science.

Teaching

Undergraduate Teaching

Rob teaches the Ecology of the Biosphere module of the 'Earth System Processes' course for the Preliminary Examination. He also teaches on the Final Honour School Special Subject course Biogeography, for the Final Honour School.

Postgradate Teaching

Rob teaches 'Conservation Biogeography', 'Strategic Conservation Planning' and takes the Tenerife Field Course for the MSc Biodiversity Conservation and Management.

Current graduate students include:
  • Cecile Girardin
    Tropical montane forest ecosystem responses to mean temperature change.
  • Leticia Ochoa Ochoa
    The amphibian meta-community structure in three Mexican landscapes and its relationship with ecological and geographical space
D.Phil. students successfully completing since 2001:
  • Ana Malhado (2009)
    The functional biogeography of the Amazon forest canopy.
  • Janice Golding (2008)
    Change in plant biodiversity of the Flora Zambesiaca region of south-central Africa.
  • James Watson (2004)
    Bird responses to habitat fragmentation at different spatial scales: Illustrations from Madagascan and Australian case studies.
  • Paul Jepson (2001)
    The potential of bio-regional management models to create a more effective and equitable biodiversity conservation policy in Indonesia.

Selected Publications

Books
Papers and Articles