Ben WARREN

After graduating, I initially worked for two conservation organisations in Cambridge (UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre, and BirdLife International).  I then did a PhD on the phylogeography and evolution of multiple bird lineages that have radiated across the islands of the western Indian Ocean.  For this work I was based at the University of East Anglia, Natural History Museum (NHMUK), and Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.  Keeping to the insular biogeography theme, I later worked on a wide range of animal and plant taxa during my postdoc career.  This included 6 years on the French oceanic island of La Réunion, as well as periods at several other universities: Zurich, Reading, Tennessee.  I subsequently returned both to France and to birds in my current position as Maître de conférences HDR du Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle (Associate Professor & Curator).

Research

In a broad sense, I’m interested in the processes that generate and eliminate biodiversity. This includes how diversity is created (speciation, diversification) and communities are assembled, and the role of evolutionary history in determining the relative abundance of species over time, and why some lineages decline towards eventual extinction.

Three major ongoing research topics, all of which employ genetics, biogeography and oceanic islands to make inferences:

- Understanding susceptibility to extinction using avian museum specimens and an associated genetic time series that spans environmental changes since first human arrival;

- Understanding the eco-evolutionary dynamics giving rise to variation in bird species abundances using an ecologically neutral model at a community scale;

- Understanding the role of gene flow and ecological gradients in shaping genetic divergence during speciation: the Macaronesian radiation of sea-lavenders (Limonium).

As in my past research, where relevant, I’m also keen for our results to be employed in conservation actions, through publications and collaboration with conservation decision-makers.