I am interested in understanding how the diversity and abundance of species life-history traits relate to large-scale ecosystem properties such as resilience. My study system is sessile space-occupies on coral reefs, focusing mainly on Scleractian corals.

During my PhD I developed several trait-based mathematical and programming tools for calculating trait-based similarity coefficients using the R platform which are due to be published shortly. Such tools have been tested using a trait database developed for 26 key Scleracinian life-history traits for 231 species of coral in the West Indian Ocean and species composition data collected on 68 reefs of varying geomorphology to depths of 35m in southwest Madagascar. The photo-database for the related project contains over 7000 depth and geotagged photoquadrat images which serves as a unique photographic database for an understudied region of the world.

The PhD project benefited greatly from the supervision of Professor Matt Keeling (Warwick Mathematics Institute) and Professor Charles Sheppard (School of Life Sciences).

Upon completing my PhD in late 2012 I took up a Early Career Fellowship with the Warwick Institute for Advanced Studies and am currently involved with various teaching activities in the School of Life Science at Warwick as a visiting researcher whilst continuing to pursue my own research interests.

More recently, I have begun exploring corals as eusocial systems with Martin Nowak's group at the Harvard Programme of Evolutionary Development.

I am currently interested in pursuing trait-based macro-ecological projects either for coral systems or in the broader context. Please contact me via email to discuss potential collaborative opportunities.