Kathy Willis

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For the Illinois State Representative, see Kathleen Willis

Kathy Willis
Residence UK
Citizenship British
Fields Ecology, Biodiversity, Conservation
Institutions University of Cambridge
University of Oxford
Known for long-term ecology

Professor Katherine J. "Kathy" Willis is a biologist, focusing on on the relationship between long-term ecosystem dynamics and environmental change. She holds the Tasso Leventis Chair of Biodiversity and is Associate Director of the Biodiversity Institute[1] in the Zoology Department at the University of Oxford,[2] and a Professorial Fellow at Merton College.[3]

Early career

She gained her first degree in Geography and Environmental Science from the University of Southampton, and her Ph.D. in Plant Sciences from the University of Cambridge. Following this she held a Selwyn College Research Fellowship at the University of Cambridge, a NERC Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Plant Sciences, and a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in the Godwin Institute for Quaternary Research, University of Cambridge. In 1999 she moved to a lectureship in the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, where she established the Oxford Long-term Ecology Laboratory in 2002.

Professional career

Kathy Willis was made a Professor of Long-term Ecology in 2008,[4] and on 1 October 2010 became the first Tasso Leventis Professor of Biodiversity and Director of the James Martin Biodiversity Institute in Zoology. In addition to her position in Oxford she is also an adjunct Professor (Professor II) in the Department of Biology at the University of Bergen, Norway. She is a trustee of WWF-UK,[5] a panel member on the advisory board for the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission, a trustee of the Percy Sladen Memorial Fund, an International Member on the Swedish Research Council's FORMAS evaluation panel, and a College Member of the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). From 2012 -2013 she held the elected position of Director-at-Large of the International Biogeography Society.[6] In 2013 she was appointed Director of Science at Kew Royal Botanic Gardens.[7]

Research

Willis’s research[8] focuses on reconstructing long term responses of ecosystems to environmental change, including climate change, human impact and sea level rise. She argues that understanding long-term records of ecosystem change is essential for a proper understanding of future ecosystem responses. Many scientific studies are limited to short-term datasets that rarely span more than 40–50 years, however many larger organisms, including trees and large mammals, have an average generation time which exceeds this timescale. Short-term records therefore are unable to reconstruct natural variability overtime, or the rates of migration as a result of environmental change. She also argues that a short-term approach gives a static view of ecosystems, and an unrealistic ‘norm’ which must be maintained or restored and protected. Her research group in the Oxford Long-term Ecology laboratory therefore focuses on the reconstruction of ecosystem responses to environmental change on timescales ranging from tens to millions of years, and the applications of long-term records in biodiversity conservation.

Selected publications

  • Willis, K.J., K.D. Bennett, S.L. Burrough, M. Macias-Fauria, C. Tovar. 2013. Determining the response of African biota to climate change: using the past to model the future. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 368(1625):20120491
  • Willis, K.J., E.S. Jeffers, C. Tovar, P. Long, N. Caithness, M.G.D. Smith, R. Hagemann, C. Collin-Hansen, J. Weissenberger. 2012. Determining the ecological value of landscapes beyond protected areas. Biological Conservation, 147(1): 3-12
  • Willis, K.J. and Bhagwat, S.A. 2009. Biodiversity and climate change. Science, 326, 806-807
  • Van Leeuwen, J., Froyd, C.A.; Van der Knapp, P., Coffey, E., Tye, A., Willis, K.J. 2008. Fossil pollen guides conservation in the Galapagos. Science, 322, 1206
  • Froyd, C. and Willis, K.J. 2008. Emerging issues in biodiversity and conservation management: the need for a palaeoecological perspective. Quaternary Science Reviews, 27, 1723-1732
  • Willis, K.J. and Birks, H.J. B. 2006. What is Natural? The need for a long-term perspective in biodiversity conservation. Science, 314, 1261-1265
  • Willis, K.J. and McElwain, J.C. 2002. The Evolution of Plants. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 380pp.
  • Willis, K.J. and Whittaker, R.J. 2002. Species diversity: scale matters. Science, 295, 1245-1248
  • Willis, K.J., Kleczkowski, A. and Crowhurst, S.J. 1999, 124,000 year periodicity in terrestrial vegetation change during the late Pliocene epoch. Nature, 397,685-688.
  • Willis, K.J., Kleczkowski, A. Briggs, K.M. and Gilligan, C.A. 1999. The role of sub-Milankovitch climatic forcing in the initiation of the Northern Hemisphere Glaciation. Science, 285, 568-571.

Awards

References

  1. ↑ Profile at Biodiversity Institute
  2. ↑ Staff page, University of Oxford, Department of Zoology
  3. ↑ University of Oxford, Merton College
  4. ↑ Oxford Long Term Ecology webpage
  5. ↑ WWF-UK Trustees Biographies 2011
  6. ↑ International Biogeography Society, Past Officers
  7. ↑ Press Release, Kew Gardens
  8. ↑ Professor K.J. Willis, Research Gate profile
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