Research Faculty #30

General Information

Academic History

M. Sc. (1997) University of Cape Town, South Africa
Ph. D. (2004) Imperial College, London, UK

Contact Information

Office Phone

Research Information

Research Abstract

Ecology and evolutionary biology; the distribution of biodiversity and the challenges posed to its conservation through recent changes to the environment.

Research Interests

My research lies at the interface between ecology and evolutionary biology, making use of the information contained within phylogenetic trees to provide a bridge between them. The integration of phylogenetic approaches in ecology has been transformative, and has given rise to new sub-disciplines in biodiversity science, invasion biology, climate change biology, emerging infectious disease research and community ecology.

Selected Publications

For past and current publications visit this link: https://phyloecology.ca/publications/

Davies, T. J. [2021]. Ecophylogenetics redux. Ecology Letters, doi.org/10.1111/ele.13682. 

Ssebuliba*, E., & Davies, T. J. [2021]. Assessing the phylogenetic host breadth of millet pathogens and its implication for disease spillover. Ecological Solutions and Evidence, 2(1), e12040. 

Davies, T.J., Daru, B.H., Bezeng, B.S., Charles-Dominique, T., Hempson, G.P., Kabongo, R.M., Maurin, O., Muasya, A.M., van der Bank, M. and Bond, W.J., [2020]. Savanna tree evolutionary ages inform the
reconstruction of the paleoenvironment of our hominin ancestors. Scientific Reports, 10: 12430. 

Hoveka, L.N., van der Bank, M. and Davies, T.J., [2020]. Evaluating the performance of a protected area network in South Africa and its implications for megadiverse countries. Biological Conservation, 248: 1085. 

Hoveka, L.N., van der Bank, M., Bezeng, B.S. and Davies, T.J., [2020]. Identifying biodiversity knowledge gaps for conserving South Africa’s endemic flora. Biodiversity and Conservation, 29: 2803–2819. 

Teitelbaum, C.S., Amoroso, C.R., Huang, S., Davies, T.J., Rushmore, J., Drake, J.M., Stephens, P.R., Byers, J.E., Majewska, A.A. and Nunn, C.L., [2020]. A comparison of diversity estimators applied to a database of host–parasite associations. Ecography doi.org/10.1111/ecog.05143. 

Menéndez-Guerrero, P.A., Davies, T.J. and Green, D.M., [2020]. Extinctions of Threatened Frogs may Impact Ecosystems in a Global Hotspot of Anuran Diversity. Herpetologica doi.org/10.1655/Herpetologica-D-20-00011.1. 

Elmasri, M., Farrell, M.J., Davies, T.J. and Stephens, D.A., [2020]. A hierarchical Bayesian model for predicting ecological interactions using scaled evolutionary relationships. Annals of Applied Statistics, 14: 221-240. 

Gupta, J., Ekins, P., Boileau, P., Asrar, G., Baker, E., Banuri, T., Bemigisha, J., Clark, G., Crump, J., Mayocyoc-Daguitan, F. and Davies, J., [2020]. Technical Summary-Global Environment Outlook (GEO- 6): Healthy Planet, Healthy People, Cambridge University Press. Updated April 26/2020 - Page 11/21

Morales-Castilla, I., Davies, J.T. and Rodríguez, M.Á., [2020] Historical contingency, niche conservatism and the tendency for some taxa to be more diverse towards the poles. J. Biogeography 47:783–794. 

Menéndez-Guerrero, P.A., Green, D.M. and Davies, T.J., [2020]. Climate change and the future restructuring of Neotropical anuran biodiversity. Ecography 43: 222–235. 

Carvajal-Endara, S., Hendry, A. P., Emery, N. C., Neu, C. P., Carmona, D., Gotanda, K. M., Davies, T. J., Chaves, J., Johnson, M. T. J. [2019] The ecology and evolution of seed predation by Darwin's finches on Tribulus cistoides on the Galápagos Islands. Ecological Monographs e01392 

Pearse, W.D., Legendre, P., Peres-Neto, P.R. and Davies, T.J., [2019]. The interaction of phylogeny and community structure: Linking the community composition and trait evolution of clades. Global Ecology and Biogeography 28: 1499-1511. 

Davies, T.J., [2019]. The macroecology and macroevolution of plant species at risk. New Phytologist 222: 708–713. doi.org/10.1111/nph.15612.

Farrell, M.J. and Davies, T.J. [2019]. Disease mortality in domesticated animals is predicted by host evolutionary relationships. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 201817323. 

Gupta, J., Hurley, F., Grobicki, A., Keating, T., Stoett, P., Baker, E., Guhl, A., Davies, J. and Ekins, P. [2019]. Communicating the health of the planet and its links to human health. The Lancet Planetary Health. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(19)30040-3 

Elliott, T.L. and Davies, T.J. [2019]. Phylogenetic attributes, conservation status and geographical origin of species gained and lost over 50 years in a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. Biodiversity and Conservation, 28(3): 711-728. 

Meineke, E.K., Classen, A.T., Sanders, N.J. and Davies, T.J., [2019]. Herbarium specimens reveal increasing herbivory over the past century. Journal of Ecology 107(1): 105-117. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.13057. 

Davies, T.J., Regetz, J. Wolkovich, E.M., McGill, B.J., [2019] Phylogenetically weighted regression: A method for modelling non-stationarity on evolutionary trees. Global Ecology and Biogeography 28(2): 275-285. DOI: 10.1111/geb.12841.

Elliott, T.L. and Davies, T.J. [2019]. A comparison of phylogenetic and species beta diversity measures describing vegetation assemblages along an elevation gradient. Journal of Vegetation Science 30(1): 98- 107. 

Pavoine, S., Bonsall, M.B., Davies, T.J., Masi, S., [2019] Mammal extinctions and the increasing isolation of humans on the tree of life. Ecology and Evolution 9(3): 914-924. 

Pearse, W.D., Morales-Castilla, I., James, L.S., Farrell, M., Boivin, F. and Davies, T.J. [2018]. Complexity is complicated and so too is comparing complexity metrics-A response to Mikula et al. [2018]. Evolution, 72(12): 2836-2838. 

Meineke, E.K., Davies, T.J., Daru, B.H., and Davis, C.C., [2018] Biological collections for understanding biodiversity in the Anthropocene. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 374(1763): 20170386.

Farrell, M.J., Govender, D., Hajibabaei, M., Berrang-Ford, L., van der Bank, M., Davies, T.J., [2018] Bacterial diversity in the waterholes of the Kruger National Park: an eDNA metabarcoding approach. Genome doi:10.1139/gen-2018-0064. 

Meineke, E.K. & Davies, T.J. [2018] Museum specimens provide novel insights into changing plantherbivore interactions. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. 374(1763): 20170393. 

Pearse, W.D., Barbosa, A.M., Fritz, S.A., Keith, S.A., Harmon, L.J., Harte, J., Silvestro, D., Xiao, X. and Davies, T.J., [2018] Building up biogeography: Pattern to process. Journal of Biogeography. 45: 1223- 1230. 

Meineke, E.K., Davis, C.C. and Davies, T.J., [2018]. The unrealized potential of herbaria for global change biology. Ecological Monographs 88(4): 505-525. DOI:10.1002/ecm.1307.

Tucker, C.M., Davies, T.J., Cadotte, M.W. and Pearse, W.D., [2018]. On the relationship between phylogenetic diversity and trait diversity. Ecology 99: 1473-1479. DOI:10.1002/ecy.2349. 

Rolshausen, G., Davies, T.J. and Hendry, A.P., [2018]. Evolutionary Rates Standardized for Evolutionary Space: Perspectives on Trait Evolution. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 33: 379-389. DOI:10.1016/j.tree.2018.04.001. 

Lewthwaite, J.M.M., Angert, A.L., Kembel, S.W., Goring, S.J., Davies, T.J., Mooers, A.Ø., Sperling, F.A.H., Vamosi, S.M., Vamosi, J.C. and Kerr, J.T., [2018]. Canadian butterfly climate debt is significant and correlated with range size. Ecography 41(12): 2005-2015. DOI:10.1111/ecog.03534.

Gogarten, J.F., Davies, T.J., Benjamino, J., Gogarten, J.P., Graf, J., Mielke, A., Mundry, R., Nelson, M.C.,
Wittig, R.M., Leendertz, F.H. and Calvignac-Spencer, S., [2018]. Factors influencing bacterial microbiome composition in a wild non-human primate community in Taï National Park, Côte d’Ivoire. The ISME journal, p.1. 

Shooner, S., Davies, T.J., Saikia, P., Deka, J., Bharali, S., Tripathi, O.P., Singha, L., Latif Khan, M. and Dayanandan, S., [2018]. Phylogenetic diversity patterns in Himalayan forests reveal evidence for environmental filtering of distinct lineages. Ecosphere, 9(5), p.e02157. 

Pearse, W.D., Morales-Castilla, I., James, L.S., Farrell, M., Boivin, F. and Davies, T.J. [2018] Global macroevolution and macroecology of passerine song. Evolution doi.org/10.1111/evo.13450. 

Molina-Venegas, R., Moreno-Saiz, J.C., Parga, I.C., Davies, T.J., Peres-Neto, P.R. and Rodríguez, M.Á.,
2018. Assessing among-lineage variability in phylogenetic imputation of functional trait datasets. Ecography https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.03480. 

Park, A.W., Farrell, M.J., Schmidt, J.P., Huang, S., Dallas, T.A., Pappalardo, P., Drake, J.M., Stephens, P.R.,
Poulin, R., Nunn, C.L. and Davies, T.J. [2018]. Characterizing the phylogenetic specialism–generalism spectrum of mammal parasites. Proceedings of the Royal Society, B, 285: 20172613. 

Daru, B.H., Bank, M. and Davies, T.J. [2018]. Unravelling the evolutionary origins of biogeographic
assemblages. Diversity and Distributions 24:313-324.