Prof Owen Lewis

Professor of Ecology

owen.lewis@biology.ox.ac.uk +44 (0)1865 271162

Research Interests

I am a community ecologist and conservation biologist. My interest is in the processes that maintain, structure and threaten biodiversity, particularly in highly diverse tropical forest ecosystems. My current research areas include the impact of human activities (including fragmentation and commercial timber extraction) on the diversity and functioning of tropical forest ecosystems; the structure and dynamics of food webs involving plants, insect herbivores and their parasitoids; the role of plant pathogens and insect herbivores in structuring and maintaining the high diversity of tropical plants; and the impact of climate change, habitat fragmentation and degradation on interspecific interactions and associated ecosystem functions and services.

For a full list of publications, please visit my Google Scholar profile or view my orcid profile:

orcid.org/0000-0001-7935-6111

Selected Publications

• Marsh, C., Turner, E., Blonder, B. W., Bongalov, B., Both, S., Cruz, R., ..Lewis, O.T., . . Hector, A. (2025). Tropical forest clearance impacts biodiversity and function, whereas logging changes structure. Science 387, 171-175. doi:10.1126/science.adf9856
• Ashton, L., Boyle, M., Dias-Silva, K., Dongmo, M., França, F.M., Gregory, N., Kitching, R.L., Ledger, M., Lewis, O.T., Sharp, A., Stork, N.E., Williamson, J., Bonebrake, T.  (2025). Causes and consequences of insect decline in tropical forests. Nature Reviews Biodiversity, https://doi.org/10.1038/s44358-025-00038-9.
• Chen, J. & Lewis, O.T. (2023). Experimental heatwaves facilitate invasion and alter species interactions and composition in a tropical host-parasitoid community. Global Change Biology, 29, 6261-6275.
• Chen, J. & Lewis, O.T. (2023). Limits to species distributions on tropical mountains shift from high temperature to competition as elevation increases. Ecological Monographs 94, e1597.
• Bellekom, B., Hackett, T.D. and Lewis, O.T. (2021). A network perspective on the vectoring of human disease. Trends in Parasitology, doi.org/10.1016/j.pt.2020.12.001.
• Jeffs, C.T., Terry, C.D., Higgie, M., Jandová, A., Konvičková, H., Brown, J.J.,  Lue, C.H., Schiffer, M., O’Brien, E.K., Bridle, J., Hrcek, J., Lewis, O.T. (2020). Molecular analyses reveal consistent food web structure with elevation in rainforest Drosophila – parasitoid communities. Ecography, doi.org/10.1111/ecog.05390.
• Gripenberg, S., Basset, Y., Lewis, O.T., Terry, J.C.D., Wright, S.J., Simón, I., Fernandez, D.C., Cedeño, M., Rivera, M., Barrios, H., Brown, J.W, Calderón, O., Cognato, A.I., Kim, J., Miller, S., Morse, G.E., Pinzon-Navarro, S., Quicke, D.L.J., Robbins, R.K., Salminen, J-P. & Vesterinen, E. (2019) A highly-resolved food web for insect seed predators in a species-rich tropical forest. Ecology Letters, doi.org/10.1111/ele.13359.
• Wong, M.K.L., Guénard, B. & Lewis, O.T. (2018). Trait-based ecology of terrestrial arthropods.  Biological Reviews, doi.org/10.1111/brv.12488.
• Staniczenko, P.P.A., Lewis, O.T., Tylianakis, J.M., Albrecht, M., Coudrain,V., Klein, A-M., Reed-Tsochas, F. (2017). Predicting the effect of habitat modification on networks of interacting species. Nature Communications, 8, 792. doi:10.1038/s41467-017-00913-w
• Bagchi, R., Gallery, R.E., Gripenberg, S., Gurr, S.J., Narayan, L., Addis, C.E., Freckleton, R.P. & Lewis, O.T. (2014) Pathogens and insect herbivores drive rainforest plant diversity and composition. Nature, 506: 85-88.
• Tylianakis, J.M., Tscharntke, T. & Lewis, O.T. (2007) Habitat modification alters the structure of tropical host-parasitoid food webs. Nature, 445, 202-205