Authority control databases
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| National | |
| Academics | |
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Maria Dornelas | |
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| Education | BSc University of Lisbon, PhD James Cook University, post doctoral fellowship University of St. Andrews |
| Occupation(s) | researcher and professor |
| Employer | University of St. Andrews School of Biology |
| Known for | research into biodiversity changes on coral reefs and global ecosystems; macroecology |
Maria Dornelas FRSE is a researcher in biodiversity and professor of biology based at St. Andrew's University. She was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2021. Her research into biodiversity change[1] has challenged previous views, on the growth and decline of coral reefs[2] to understanding global biodiversity with data analysis on how species or ecosystems are changing in the Anthropocene.[3]
Maria Ana Azeredo de Dornelas completed her BSc at the University of Lisbon, graduating in 2000, and then a doctorate in the School of Marine Biology, studying 'biodiversity patterns in the context of neutral theory[4] at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia in 2006.[5] Her research challenged the orthodoxy of how coral reefs developed and died off. It was published in Nature[6] and called ' a paper that will turn our attention in a completely new direction' by Dr John Pandolfi of the University of Queensland.[2]
After her postdoctoral fellowship, in 2012 she became a Lecturer,[7] then Reader, now Professor, in the Centre for Biological Diversity of the School of Biology at University of St Andrews.[1] She was external examiner for University College London on 'Predicting population trends under environmental change: comparing methods against observed data'.[8] She is a visiting professor in the School of Geosciences at the University of Edinburgh.[9]
Her interest in the ecology of the tropical areas, and coral in particular grew during her undergraduate honours project in Mozambique. Her fellowship included working with the University of Aveiro[7] and the ARC Centre of Excellence Coral Reef Studies on 'morphological and life history diversity of corals' (2008-9).[4] When not focused on biodiversity change, macroecology or reef ecology, her research also looked into Trinidadian guppies, in considering polyandry in fish.[10]
Dornelas's key published works are listed by the University of St Andrews.[11] She compiled and standardised a database of publicly available timeseries,[12] which is the basis of the BioTIME project.[13]
Her funded project from the Leverhulme Trust (2019-2029) is generating datasets, and cross-discipline collaborations.[14][15]
Citations can be found in Google Scholar[16]
Dornelas has engaged in a number of public outreach events such as talking to the British Ecological Society on 'Is biodiversity declining?'[17] She was a member of the Young Academy of Scotland, and was positively debating the future of higher education and its resilience in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.[18]
In 2020 Dornelas contributed to the World Economic Forum discussion on How forest loss has changed biodiversity across the globe over the last 150 years.[19] And her collaborative work, published in Nature in 2020 has contributed to debate on vertebrate species decline, for example in a Living Planet Report,[3] showing that average declines in populations do not reflect some rapidly declining species at risk.[20]
She has been made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2021.[1]
