Charlie Marsh

Associate Research Scientist

My research leads a bit of a double life. Sometimes I work in tropical forest research in the Amazon, Borneo, Madagascar and the Comoros Islands on taxa as diverse as birds, butterflies, dung beetles, large mammals and ants. In darker times (which, lets face it, is pretty much all the time these days) I am tied to the computer developing advanced methods and statistical analyses of large-scale and simulated spatial datasets. These computers have generally been located in the less exotic corners of the UK (Imperial college with Rob Ewers, Leeds University with Bill Kunin, and Oxford University with Andy Hector).

Both approaches focus on anthropogenic disturbance, particularly fragmentation and habitat modification with an emphasis on community-level processes (eg alpha- and beta-diversity). In particular I look at the scaling of these processes, how we can decouple the effects of scales of observation from interpretations of spatial patterns of diversity, and how we can use these patterns. Much of this research involved the creation of new R packages and the development of novel analytical techniques.