Ecosystems and Environment Research Centre

School of Science, Engineering and Environment

Christoph Meyer

E-mail – c.f.j.meyer@salford.ac.uk

Twitter – @ChrisFJMeyer

I am an animal ecologist with general research interests at the nexus of biodiversity research, landscape ecology, and conservation biology. My line of research centers on timely topics in conservation biology and sustainability science: trying to advance our understanding about how functionally important vertebrate taxa are affected by habitat fragmentation and anthropogenic land-use change and about how biodiversity and ecosystem services can be safeguarded in the rapidly expanding agricultural areas that increasingly dominate landscapes throughout much of the tropics.

For much of my research I use bats as models, a group that due to their high species richness, ecological diversity and functional importance in tropical ecosystems has captivated me early on in my career. I have broad experience in conducting field-based ecological and conservation-related studies on bats and, to a lesser extent other taxa (birds, primates), in various tropical and temperate-zone countries

Current and Past Projects

Ongoing research projects I am leading or involved in:

  • Conserving biodiversity and enhancing food security: the role of birds and bats as suppressors of rice insect pests in West Africa (PI Dr A. Rainho, University of Lisbon, Portugal)
  • Temporal dynamics of the impacts of forest fragmentation on Neotropical bat assemblages (PI)

Past research projects I have been involved in:

  • Agro-forestry management practices of montados and its impact on bats and birds (PI Prof J. Palmeirim, University of Lisbon, Portugal)
  • Endemic pigeons of São Tomé: developing science-based conservation and sustainable use of African forest pigeons (PI Prof J. Palmeirim, University of Lisbon, Portugal)
  • Patterns of gene flow and population genetic differentiation among isolated populations of the giant noctule bat, Nyctalus lasiopterus (PI Dr. Javier Juste, Estación Biológica de Doñana, CSIC, Seville, Spain).

Publications

Recent representative publications:

  • Farneda, F. Z., Grelle, C. E. V., Rocha, R., López-Baucells, A., Ferreira, D. F. & Meyer, C. F. J. (2020) Predicting biodiversity loss in island and countryside ecosystems through the lens of taxonomic and functional biogeography. Ecography, 43, 97-106.
  • López-Baucells, A., Torrent, L., Rocha, R., Bobrowiec, P.E.D., Palmeirim, J.M. & Meyer, C.F.J. (2019) Stronger together: Combining automated classifiers with manual post-validation optimizes the workload vs reliability trade-off of species identification in bat acoustic surveys. Ecological Informatics, 49, 45-53.
  • Rocha, R., Ovaskainen, O., López-Baucells, A., Farneda, F. Z., Sampaio, E. M., Bobrowiec, P. E. D., Cabeza, M., Palmeirim, J. M. & Meyer, C. F. J. (2018) Secondary forest regeneration benefits old-growth specialist bats in a fragmented tropical landscape. Scientific Reports, 8, 3819.
  • Farneda, F.Z., Rocha, R., López-Baucells, A., Sampaio, E.M., Palmeirim, J.M., Bobrowiec, P.E.D., Grelle, C.E.V. & Meyer, C.F.J. (2018) Functional recovery of Amazonian bat assemblages following secondary forest succession. Biological Conservation, 218, 192-199.
  • Rocha, R., López-Baucells, A., Farneda, F., Groenenberg, M., Bobrowiec, P.E.D., Cabeza, M., Palmeirim, J.M. & Meyer, C.F.J. (2017). Consequences of a large-scale deforestation experiment for Central Amazonian bats: disentangling the relative importance of local and landscape-scale effects. Landscape Ecology,32, 31-45.

See here for a full publication list:

Salford Repository (USIR)

Google Scholar

ResearchGate

ORCID

Current Research Students

Lab Alumni

  • Peter Syme
  • Natalie Yoh
  • Fábio Farneda
  • Adrià López-Baucells
  • Ricardo Rocha
  • Sabhrina Gita Aninta
  • Silvia Fraixedas Núñez
  • Laura Torrent
  • Diogo Ferreira
  • João Santos
  • Maria Mas Navarro
  • Inês Silva
  • Milou Groenenberg
  • Sónia Pina