Maria Dornelas
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Maria Dornelas | |
|---|---|
| Education | BSc University of Lisbon, PhD James Cook University, post doctoral fellowship University of St. Andrews |
| Occupations | Researcher and professor |
| Employer | University of St. Andrews School of Biology |
| Known for | Research into biodiversity changes on coral reefs and global ecosystems; macroecology |
Maria Dornelas FRSE is a researcher in biodiversity and professor of biology at St. Andrew's University. She was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2021. Her research into biodiversity change[1] has challenged previous views, on the growth and decline of coral reefs[2] to understanding global biodiversity with data analysis on how species or ecosystems are changing in the Anthropocene.[3]
Dornelas completed her BSc at the University of Lisbon, graduating in 2000, and then a doctorate in the School of Marine Biology, studying 'biodiversity patterns in the context of neutral theory[4] at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia in 2006.[5] Her research challenged the orthodoxy of how coral reefs developed and died off. It was published in Nature[6] and called ' a paper that will turn our attention in a completely new direction' by Dr John Pandolfi of the University of Queensland.[2]
After her postdoctoral fellowship, in 2012 she became a Lecturer,[7] then Reader, now Professor, in the Centre for Biological Diversity of the School of Biology at University of St Andrews.[1] She was external examiner for University College London on 'Predicting population trends under environmental change: comparing methods against observed data'.[8] She is a visiting professor in the School of Geosciences at the University of Edinburgh.[9]
Her interest in the ecology of the tropical areas, and coral in particular grew during her undergraduate honours project in Mozambique. Her fellowship included working with the University of Aveiro[7] and the ARC Centre of Excellence Coral Reef Studies on 'morphological and life history diversity of corals' (2008-9).[4] When not focused on biodiversity change, macroecology or reef ecology, her research also looked into Trinidadian guppies, in considering polyandry in fish.[10]
Selected publications
Dornelas's key published works are listed by the University of St Andrews.[11] She compiled and standardised a database of publicly available timeseries,[12] which is the basis of the BioTIME project.[13]
Her funded project from the Leverhulme Trust (2019-2029) is generating datasets, and cross-discipline collaborations.[14][15]
Citations can be found in Google Scholar.[16]
