About Us

We are a team of researchers based at the Department of Biology at the University of Oxford. We study a broad range of interrelated questions in community ecology, with a strong emphasis on empirical work. Our research interests include tropical forest diversity, ecological networks, ecosystem functioning, inter-specific interactions, conservation biology, agro-ecology and the impact of human activities on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. On this website you can find information about our research, the people involved, and our collaborators in Oxford and more widely.

Recent Publications

• Brown, J.J., Jandová, A., Jeffs, C.T., Higgie, M., Nováková, E., Lewis, O.T. & Hrček, J. (2023). Microbiome structure of a wild Drosophila community along tropical elevational gradients and comparison to laboratory lines. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, in press.

• Kemp, V.A., Grey, J., Hemprich-Bennett, D., Rossiter, S.J., Lewis, O.T., Wilkinson, C.L., Clare, E.L. & Kratina, P. (2023). Changes in trophic ecology of mobile predators in response to rainforest degradation. Journal of Applied Ecology, in press.

• Bicknell, J.E., O’Hanley, J.R.O., Armsworth, P.R, Slade, E.M., Deere, N.J., Mitchell, S.L., Hemprich-Bennett, D., Kemp, V., Rossiter, S.J., Lewis, O.T., Coomes, D.A., Agama, A.L., Reynolds, G., Struebig, M.J., Davies, Z.G. (2023). Enhancing the ecological value of tropical agriculture through set-asides. Nature Sustainability, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-01049-6.

• Bellekom, B., Bailey, A., England, M., Langlands, Z., Lewis, O.T.  & Hackett, T.D. (2023). Effects of storage conditions and digestion time on DNA amplification of biting midge (Culicoides) blood meals. Parasites and Vectors,16:13 https://doi.org/10.1186/s13071-022-05607-x

News

• Job opportunity: Research Assistant
• New paper on optimising oil palm landscapes for biodiversity in Nature Sustainability
• Congratulations to Jamal!
• Paper accepted: Diversity, duplication and genomic organisation of homeobox genes in Lepidoptera