Plenary Speakers

Plenary Speakers

Daniel Pauly

Daniel Pauly is a French and Canadian citizen who completed his university studies in Germany. After many years at the International Center for Living Aquatic Resources Management (ICLARM), in the Philippines, Dr. Daniel Pauly became in 1994 a Professor at the Fisheries Centre of the University of British Columbia in Canada, of which he was the Director from 2003 to 2003. Since 1999, he is also Principal Investigator of the Sea Around Us, devoted to studying, documenting and mitigating the impact of industrial fishing on the world’s marine ecosystems.

The concepts, methods and software Daniel (co-)developed, documented in over 1000 well-cited publications, are used across the world, following multiple courses and workshops given in four languages on all five continents. This applies especially to the ELEFAN software for fish growth analysis, the Ecopath approach for modelling aquatic ecosystems and FishBase, the online encyclopedia of fishes.

This work is recognized in various profiles, notably in Science, Nature and the New York Times, and by numerous awards, notably the International Cosmos Prize (Japan, 2005), the Volvo Environmental Prize, (Sweden, 2006), the Ramon Margalef Prize (Spain, 2008), the Nierenberg Prize for Science in the Public Interest (US, 2012) and the Peter Benchley Award (USA, 2015). This work also led to Daniel receiving multiple honorary doctorates and being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (Academy of Science).

Watch Luigi Boitani present the BES Lecture at our 2015 Annual meeting in Edinburgh.

Anne Chao

Anne Chao received her BS in mathematics from National Tsing Hua University in 1973, and her PhD in statistics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1977. Since 1978, she has been with the Institute of Statistics, National Tsing Hua University, where she is currently a Tsing Hua Distinguished Chair Professor.

Anne is a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and held a Taiwan National Chair Professorship from 2005-2008. Dr Chao has long been fascinated with mathematical and statistical issues arising in ecology and related sciences; her major research interests include ecological statistics, statistical inferences of biodiversity measures, and statistical analysis of ecological and environmental survey data. She and her collaborators have published more than 100 papers. These have (i) developed several biodiversity measures/estimators including Chao1, Chao2, ACE, and ICE for species richness, as well as some novel methods to infer entropy, diversity and related similarity/differentiation measures, (ii) established a unified mathematical/statistical framework for taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional diversities, and (iii) generalized the classic sample-size-based rarefaction method to sample-coverage-based rarefaction and extrapolation, to standardize biodiversity samples.

To implement their methodologies, Chao and her colleagues/students have also developed statistical software including CARE (CApture-REcapture), SPADE (Species Prediction And Diversity Estimation), iNEXT (iNterpolation/EXTrapolation), and PhD (Phylogenetic Diversity). For the past 20 years, Chao served in the editorial boards of four major statistical journals, and currently serves as an Associate Editor for Methods in Ecology and Evolution.

Watch Josephine Pemberton deliver the Tansley Lecture at our 2015 Annual meeting in Edinburgh

Alison is Head of Theme: Safeguarding Natural Capital at the James Hutton Institute, UK. She did her BSc at King’s College University of London, PhD at Aberdeen University/ CEH and her first postdoc in the wilds of Western Australia at CSIRO. Much of her research relates to applied land use issues, with a strong focus on drivers of biodiversity change, in particular the impacts of mammalian herbivores on woody plant species in different systems across the world.

Her own research and the research she manages is increasingly set in the wider context of Ecosystem Services (ES) as part of large, transdisciplinary, management and policy-related research projects – these include multifunctional land management and ES delivery, e.g. conflicts between habitat expansion targets for biodiversity versus changing agricultural and other demands.

Alison works closely with land managers at all levels, from individuals to government, and has contributed as an author for UK initiatives such as the National Ecosystem Assessment.  Alison is currently Chair of the Natural Capital Initiative, and she sits on various committees and steering groups, including the Scottish Forum on Natural Capital, the Science Faculty Board of the University of Highlands and Islands, and the ALTER-Net Council: Europe’s Ecosystem Research Network. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology.

Alison has been an active member of the BES for most of her career, including a stint on Council, as book review editor for Journal of Applied Ecology and received our Founder’s Award. We look forward to her talk!

Watch Pat Monaghan present ’12 Months in Ecology’ at our 2015 Annual Meeting in Edinburgh.

Hugh Possingham

Hugh is the Chief Scientist of The Nature Conservancy having recently moved from the University of Queensland.  His group of 29 PhD students and 15 postdocs (embedded in three centres) work all over the world using decision science tools from economics and applied mathematics to formulate and solve conservation problems in the real world.  For example, Tun Mustapha marine park, the largest in Malaysia declared in May, was a joint project with WWF Malaysia and Sabah Parks.  His interests include: conservation metrics, biodiversity offsetting, population modelling, sea-sharing and sea-sparing, prioritising actions, spatial zoning with Marxan and other tools, optimal monitoring and government policy.  Here you can find a link to a magazine style description of some of the group’s most recent work and his papers.

Hugh was recently elected a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences (USA).  He has a debilitating obsession with bird watching – treat him kindly.

Watch Bill Sutherland deliver his Presidential Address at our 2015 Annual Meeting in Edinburgh.