Biogeography 

Prof Jon Sadler and Dr Tom Matthews are part of a large team within the Biogeography and Ecology Team at the University of Birmingham. 

Dr Matthews is a Birmingham Fellow who researches global environmental change issues using macroecological, macroevolutionary and biogeographical approaches. He applies a mixture of theoretical and empirical methods to investigate various macroecological topics, including species-area relationships and species abundance distributions. He has a keen interest in island systems and in particular the application of island theory to habitat island systems.

Prof Jon Sadler is a biogeographer and ecologist whose research focuses on species population and assemblage dynamics in animals (sometimes plants). His work is highly interdisciplinary, bisecting biogeography, ecology, urban design, riparian management and island Biogeography.

Recent Publications

Matthews T.J. (2021). On The Biogeography of Habitat Islands: The Importance of Matrix Effects, Noncore Species, and Source-Sink Dynamics. The Quarterly Review of Biology,96(2)  https://doi.org/10.1086/714482  

Matthews T.J., Triantis K.A. and Whittaker R.J (2021). The Species–Area Relationship Theory and Application  ISBN: 9781108752039 Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.  

Matthews, T, Sadler, J, Kubota, Y, Woodall, CW & Pugh, T (2019) Systematic variation in North American tree species abundance distributions along macroecological climatic gradients. Global Ecology and Biogeography. 25 (5) 600-611 https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.12879

Leigh, C, Aspin, T.W.H., Matthews, T.J., Rolls, R.J., Ledger, M.E. (2019) Drought alters the functional stability of stream invertebrate communities through time. Journal of Biogeography, 46, 1988-2000 https://doi.org/10.1111/jbi.13638

Matthews, T.J. & Aspin, T. (2019) Model averaging fails to improve the extrapolation capability of the island species–area relationship. Journal of Biogeography, 46, 1558-1568 https://doi.org/10.1111/jbi.13598

Aspin, T.W., Khamis, K., Matthews, T.J., Milner, A.M., O'Callaghan, M.J., Trimmer, M. Woodward, G. and Ledger, M.E. (2018) Extreme drought pushes stream invertebrate communities over functional thresholds. Global Change Biology, 25, 230-244 https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.14495