About

EDGE Team

Jonathan is a global authority on the status and trends of threatened species. He is Conservation Programmes Director at the Zoological Society of London and works with a large number of projects which focus on monitoring the status of rare and threatened species.

His extensive fieldwork experience includes research and monitoring of western lowland gorillas in Gabon, Central Africa, developing ecotourism sites in Central Africa, monitoring rare endemic birds in the Gulf of Guinea, behavioural studies of desert baboons in Namibia.

Sam is an expert on past and present mammal extinctions. His research addresses historical and prehistoric human impacts on global ecosystems and the magnitude of human-driven extinctions over time, and how to develop conservation strategies for today’s endangered mammal species. Sam is already heavily involved with active conservation projects for top EDGE species. He has been one of the key co-ordinators for the recovery programme of the Critically Endangered Yangtze River dolphin and for the Hispaniolan solenodon.

Nick's background is in evolutionary biology and phylogenetic analysis. These skills are essential for calculating Evolutionary Distinctiveness scores. Nick is currently exploring how abundance varies among populations of butterflies and mammals in response to different forms of land-use. His research uses patterns in biodiversity to understand extinction risk and predict how threatened animals can survive into the future.

Ben’s research has provided valuable insights into extinction processes and conservation decision-making. He is currently developing species-based biodiversity indicators to enable conservationists and policy-makers to determine whether we can achieve a significant reduction in the current rate of biodiversity loss.

Helen is the EDGE Amphibians Co-ordinator. She developed the amphibian EDGE list, researched the ecological traits and conservation needs for the top 100 EDGE amphibians, and is currently responsible for implementing conservation actions for species which were identified as focal amphibians.

Sally is the EDGE Fellows Co-ordinator. She is responsible for managing and developing the EDGE Fellows Programme, which supports aspiring in-country conservationists who carry out research on little-known EDGE species and work towards implementing conservation actions for these species. Sally supports the current Fellows and is also responsible for identifying potential new Fellows to expand the programme.

Alasdair is the Lead EDGE Technical Adviser. His background in Multimedia and Internet Technology enabled him to create the EDGE website, supported by Carly Waterman and volunteers. He now works as part of the EDGE website team and is Programme Director of The Great Primate Handshake - An innovative primate conservation awareness tour of Africa.

Kate’s research is focused on the evolution of mammal biodiversity, understanding the processes that drive past and present patterns to predict the future. Kate works developing and analyzing global datasets of mammal distributions, life histories and phylogenies. In fact, she was part of the team that put together the supertree of all mammals that the ED part of the EDGE score is calculated.

James is a freelance web-developer. He is responsible for web programming, database design, and other related activities on the EDGE project. Having programmed computers in several different languages from the age of eight, James studied Physics at Imperial College, London. He worked as a software developer for ICL and then Deutsche Bank for nearly five years, before deciding to go freelance. In addition to his development work, James is a professional Thai massage teacher and practitioner and an occasional life-model and piano teacher.

David, originally from Sweden, lives in Ireland with his wife and
works for an IT company. Passionate about nature since a young age
his interest in conservation was particularly stirred during a recent
year-long round-the-world trip, when he among other things made friends with a baby Giant Anteater in an Amazonian animal orphanage and on Borneo saw EDGE Species #97 the Orangutan, as well as the endless rows of palm-oil plantations that are now pushing it towards extinction. David created the EDGE Google Earth maps, allowing you to view EDGE species anywhere on the planet.

Arne, a Canadian evolutionary biologist, is the author of over 40 papers and book chapters on the evolutionary aspects of biodiversity. Alongside recent work on the effects of El Nino on butterfly communities in Borneo, he has had a long-standing interest in the shape of the Tree of Life. It is this characteristic shape (a tree with many lonely species) that is captured in measures of Evolutionary Distinctivness and so EDGE.  Arne was trained at McGill University and at Oxford, and worked at the University of British Columbia and the Zoological Museum of Amsterdam.

Dave is a Ph.D. student working at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. He first studied evolutionary distinct species for his Master’s thesis project and now is researching how EDGE scores can be applied to the world’s birds. He also plans to investigate geographical patterns of distinctness with the hope of finding out which regions or habitats need to be prioritized.