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Speaker:  Dr Alexander C. Lees, Senior Lecturer in Conservation Biology, Manchester Metropolitan University

Securing the long-term resilience of world’s most speciose avifauna, that of the Neotropics, requires spatially and temporally explicit data to inform decisions.  Alex examines gaps in our knowledge of the region’s avifauna through the lens of the biodiversity shortfall concept; the gaps between realized knowledge and complete knowledge. This framework serves as a useful tool to take stock of the last 25 years of Neotropical ornithological work focusing on tropical forest species and he highlights seven key shortfalls in biodiversity data related to limited knowledge about taxonomy, distribution, abundance, evolutionary patterns, abiotic tolerances, species traits, and biotic interactions.

Dr Alexander Lees is a senior lecturer in tropical ecology at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK and a research associate of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, USA. Alex has been working in the Brazilian Amazon for the last 16 years on the impacts of land cover change on Brazilian biodiversity. He spent five years working at the Goeldi Museum in Brazil and he is one of the steering committee members of the Sustainable Amazon Network.