Robert Brian OHara
Background and activities
My career has been dedicated to discovering whether I am a biologist or a statistician - I intend to retire once I come to a definite answer. Most of my work has been on ecology and evolution, using statistical methods to put data and models together to try to learnmore about the real world.
My main interest at the moment is the development of methods to model the distributions and dynamics of species an communities, where we have a variety of data sources that need to be respected, and models of the unobserved true distributions and dynamics from which we want to infer what drives the distributions of species, and oredict how this will change in the near future.
Scientific, academic and artistic work
A selection of recent journal publications, artistic productions, books, including book and report excerpts. See all publications in the database
Journal publications
- (2021) Model-based ordination for species with unequal niche widths. Methods in Ecology and Evolution. vol. 12 (7).
- (2020) Don’t gamble the COVID-19 response on ecological hypotheses. Nature Ecology and Evolution.
- (2020) Species distribution models are inappropriate for COVID-19. Nature Ecology and Evolution.
- (2020) Comment on “A global-scale ecological niche model to predict SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus infection rate”, author Coro. Ecological Modelling. vol. 436.
- (2020) Integrating dispersal along freshwater ecosystems into species distribution models. Diversity and Distributions: A journal of biological invasions and biodiversity. vol. 26.
- (2020) Is more data always better? A simulation study of benefits and limitations of integrated distribution models. Ecography. vol. 43.
- (2020) Ecological mechanisms explaining interactions within plant-hummingbird networks: morphological matching increases towards lower latitudes. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Biological Sciences.
- (2019) Standards for distribution models in biodiversity assessments. Science Advances. vol. 5 (1).
- (2019) Integrating data from different survey types for population monitoring of an endangered species: the case of the Eld’s deer. Scientific Reports. vol. 9.
- (2019) Data integration for large-scale models of species distributions. Trends in Ecology & Evolution. vol. 35 (1).
- (2019) A comprehensive evaluation of predictive performance of 33 species distribution models at species and community levels. Ecological Monographs. vol. 89 (3).
- (2019) Modelling seasonal dynamics, population stability, and pest control in Aedes japonicus japonicus (Diptera: Culicidae). Parasites & Vectors. vol. 12 (142).
- (2018) Disentangling the effects of multiple environmental drivers on population changes within communities. Journal of Animal Ecology. vol. 87 (4).
- (2018) Moving in the Anthropocene: Global reductions in terrestrial mammalian movements. Science. vol. 359 (6374).
- (2018) Uncovering the drivers of host-associated microbiota with joint species distribution modelling. Molecular Ecology. vol. 27 (12).
- (2018) Effects of changing climate on European stream invertebrate communities: A long-term data analysis. Science of the Total Environment.
- (2018) Disentangling synergistic disease dynamics: Implications for the viral biocontrol of rabbits. Journal of Animal Ecology. vol. 87 (5).
- (2017) Broadleaf deciduous forest counterbalanced the direct effect of climate on Holocene fire regime in hemiboreal/boreal region (NE Europe). Quaternary Science Reviews. vol. 169.
- (2017) Cross-taxa generalities in the relationship between population abundance and ambient temperatures. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Biological Sciences. vol. 284 (1863).
- (2017) Using streamflow observations to estimate the impact of hydrological regimes and anthropogenic water use on European stream macroinvertebrate occurrences. Ecohydrology. vol. 10 (8).