Natural History Museum
Natural History Museum
My research focuses on understanding the distribution of plant diversity, both at very large (global) scales and also, in collaboration with different colleagues, at regional and more local scales. This might be with specimen data for rates of publication of names, for numbers of species and for genera and higher taxa. In addition, I manage the plants side of the IUCN Sampled Red List Index. This is an official CBD indicator for the 2010 Biodiversity Target, and has already produced a scientifically-rigorous baseline of the current global conservation status of plants; from this an index of extinction risk can be calculated and, periodically re-assessing the same species, tracked over time to see whether or not “a significant reduction in the current rate of loss of biodiversity” has been achieved. This project is a part of the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON), and is now being expanded into EDGE Plants, prioritising species through both their conservation status and their evolutionary distinctiveness.