Dr Tom Matthews DPhil, AFHEA

Dr Tom Matthews

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences
Senior Research Fellow / Senior Lecturer (Birmingham Fellow)

Contact details

Telephone
+44 (0)121 415 8388
Email
t.j.matthews@bham.ac.uk
View my research portal
Address
School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Tom Matthews is a Senior Research Fellow 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.

His research also aims to provide information of use in biodiversity conservation in fragmented landscapes and island systems, and a number of his papers are focused on conservation biogeography issues. Recently, he has started to focus on the impact of human-driven species extinctions and introductions on island ecosystem functioning and functional diversity.

Google scholar profile: https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=jLhtK7QAAAAJ&hl=en 

Research Gate profile: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Tom_Matthews5

Qualifications

  • DPhil – University of Oxford
  • MSc – University of Oxford (Distinction)
  • BSc (Hons) – University of Birmingham (First)
  • Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Biography

Tom completed his BSc at the University of Birmingham in 2009, before undertaking a year as a researcher at Birmingham focusing on urban ecology under the supervision of Professor Jon Sadler. He then progressed to study an MSc and DPhil at Oxford University under the supervision of Professor Rob Whittaker. His DPhil was entitled: 'analysing, modelling and mitigating the impact of habitat destruction and fragmentation on species diversity: a macroecological perspective.' During his time at Oxford he won numerous awards for his research, including a NERC scholarship, two Royal Geographical Society Awards, and the University of Oxford’s Vice Chancellor’s Award. During this time he also published over twenty peer-reviewed journal articles.

Teaching

Tom currently has a second year tutorial group and teaches on the following undergraduate modules:

  • Statistical Methods and Tutorials (Year 1)
  • Environmental Research Frontiers (Year 1)
  • Research Methods (Year 2)
  • Climate change in the Earth System (Year 3)
  • Conservation into practice (Year 3)

Postgraduate supervision

Qualified and motivated graduate students with similar research interests are welcome to email me. In particular, I am looking for PhD students interested in macroecology/biogeography questions related to different types of species diversity: taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic. I am also interested in supervising students with interests in island biogeography, functional island biogeography, and the study of global environmental change (e.g. habitat loss, climate change, invasive species) on islands.

Current Doctoral Researchers

Lead supervisor

Ye Li (2017 – present) The island biogeography of urban ecosystems.

Yating Song (2018 – present) The impact of urbanisation on carnivore species

Joseph Wayman (2018 – present) Holistic approach to global environmental change research

Eva Benavides-Ríos (2021 – present) Island macroecology and the conservation of island biodiversity

Co-supervisor

Victoria Pattison-Willits (2019 – present) Avian productivity, urbanization and climatic extremes

Imogen Mansfield (2018 – present) Indicators of air pollution-derived stress in birds

Sijeh Asuk (2018 – present) Phenological responses of food producing forest trees to climate change

Lavinia Georgescu (2019 – present) The impact of drought on tree mortality

Jordan Johnston (2020 – present) Forest recovery through the lens of volcanic disturbances


Completed students

Thomas Aspin (2016 – 2018) Drought impacts on stream ecosystems
Eva Loza Vega (2017 – 2020) Long term changes in macroinvertebrate communities in streams of Denali National Park, Alaska
Zining Whang (2017 – 2020) Drought impacts on stream ecosystems.

Research

Tom 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. In particular, his research has aimed to discern how diversity (taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic) is affected by environmental change, with a particular focus on habitat loss and fragmentation and the structure of ecological communities in fragmented landscapes. He has a keen interest in island systems, and in particular the application of island theory to habitat island systems.

His research also aims to provide information of use in biodiversity conservation in fragmented landscapes and island systems, and a number of his papers are focused on conservation biogeography issues. Recently, he has started to focus on the impact of human-driven species extinctions and introductions on island ecosystem functioning and functional diversity.

 

Google scholar profile: https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=jLhtK7QAAAAJ&hl=en 

Research Gate profile: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Tom_Matthews5

 

Other activities

  • Associate Researcher in the Biodiversity Research Group, University of the Azores.
  • Visiting Researcher to the Faculty of Science, University of the Ryukyus, Japan
  • Member of the Global Endemism and GrassPlot research working group
  • Associate Editor of the journals Journal of Biogeography and Frontiers of Biogeography
  • Member of the British Ecological Society, the International Biogeography Society, the Society for Island Biology, and the Royal Geographical Society

Publications

Recent publications

Book

Matthews, T, Triantis, K & Whittaker, RJ (eds) 2021, The species–area relationship: theory and application. Ecology, Biodiveristy and Conservation, Cambridge University Press.

Article

Rurangwa, L, Matthews, T, Niyigaba, P, Tobias, J & Whittaker, RJ 2021, 'Assessing tropical forest restoration after fire using birds as indicators: An afrotropical case study', Forest Ecology and Management, vol. 483. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2020.118765

Matthews, T & Rigal, F 2020, 'Thresholds and the species–area relationship: a set of functions for fitting, evaluating and plotting a range of commonly used piecewise models in R', Frontiers of Biogeography.

Matthews, T, Rigal, F, Kougioumoutzis, K, Trigas, P & Triantis, KA 2020, 'Unravelling the small-island effect through phylogenetic community ecology', Journal of Biogeography, vol. 47, no. 11, pp. 2341-2352. https://doi.org/10.1111/jbi.13940

Leveau, L, Ruggiero, A, Matthews, T & Bellocq, MI 2019, 'A global consistent positive effect of urban green area size on bird richness', Avian Research, vol. 10, 30. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40657-019-0168-3

Matthews, T, Rigal, F, Triantis, KA & Whittaker, RJ 2019, 'A global model of island species–area relationships', Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, vol. 116, no. 25, pp. 12337–12342. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1818190116

Mittermeier, JC, Roll, U, Matthews, T & Grenyer, R 2019, 'A season for all things: phenological imprints in Wikipedia usage and their relevance to conservation', PLoS Biology, vol. 17, no. 3, e3000146. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000146

Matthews, T, Aspin, T, Ulrich, W, Baselga, A, Kubota, Y, Proios, K, Triantis, KA, Whittaker, RJ & Strona, G 2019, 'Can additive beta-diversity be reliably partitioned into nestedness and turnover components?', Global Ecology and Biogeography, vol. 28, no. 8, pp. 1146-1154. https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.12921

Matthews, T, Ulrich, W & Kubota, Y 2019, 'Constraints on the distribution of species abundances indicate universal mechanisms of community assembly', Ecological Research.

Matthews, T, Sadler, J, Carvalho, R, Nunes, R & Borges, PAV 2019, 'Differential temporal beta-diversity patterns of native and non-native arthropod species in a fragmented native forest landscape', Ecography, vol. 42, no. 1, pp. 45-54. https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.03812

Chapter (peer-reviewed)

Matthews, T, Rigal, F, Proios, K, Triantis, KA & Whittaker, RJ 2021, Explaining variation in island species–area relationship (ISAR) model parameters between different archipelago types: expanding a global model of ISARs. in The species–area relationship: theory and application. Cambridge University Press.

Tjørve, E, Matthews, T & Whittaker, RJ 2021, The history of the species–area relationship. in The species–area relationship: theory and application. Cambridge University Press.

Matthews, T, Triantis, KA & Whittaker, RJ 2021, The species–area relationship: both general and protean? in The species–area relationship: theory and application. Cambridge University Press.

Fattorini, S, Ulrich, W & Matthews, T 2021, Using the species–area relationship to predict extinctions resulting from habitat loss. in The species–area relationship: theory and application. Cambridge University Press.

Comment/debate

Triantis, K & Matthews, T 2020, 'Biodiversity theory backed by island bird data', Nature, vol. 579, no. 7797, pp. 36-37. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-00426-5

View all publications in research portal