The most up-to-date resource is my personal website:
mcfaddenecology.com
I'm broadly interested in understanding, predicting and conserving the dynamics of biodiversity across large scales of space and time. In my research I combine fieldwork, lab work and big data to create statistical and mechanistic models of biodiversity dynamics. I study both plants and animals, either in isolation or via their interactions, and perform detailed local studies in tropical forests, as well as eco-evolutionary analyses of biotas at continental and global scales. My current research areas are:
Education
PhD, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Los Angeles, 2019
BS, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Santa Cruz, 2008
HS, Visual and Fine Arts, San Francisco School of the Arts, 2004
Research positions
Swiss NSF Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Amsterdam, 2022 - Present
Postdoctoral Researcher, Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, 2019 - 2022
Long-term Visitor, Institute of Terrestrial Ecosystems, ETH Zürich, 2019 - 2022
NSF Graduate Research Fellow, UCLA and University of Maryland, 2012 - 2016
Research Assistant, University of California Berkeley, ESPM Dpt., 2010 - 2011
Independent Researcher, Borneo, funded by Harvard Deland Award, 2008 - 2009
Publications [Google Scholar]
Marco Coelho, Elisa Barreto, Thiago Rangel, José Diniz-Filho, Rafael Wüest, Wilhelmine Bach, Alexander Skeels, Ian McFadden, David Roberts, Loïc Pellissier, Niklaus Zimmermann, Catherine Graham. The geography of climate and the global patterns of species diversity. Nature, accepted pending minor revisions.
Alex Skeels, Lydian Boschmann, Ian McFadden, Elizabeth Joyce, Oscar Hagen, Octavio Jiménez-Robles, Wilhelmine Bach, Victor Boussange, Thomas Keggin, Walter Jetz, Loïc Pellissier. 2023. Paleoenvironments shaped the exchange of terrestrial vertebrates across Wallace’s Line. Science, 381:86-92. (Link to paper, press release, The Conversation)
Esteban Guevara, Carolina Bello, Cristian Poveda, Ian McFadden, Loïc Pellissier, Matthias Schleuning, Catherine Graham. 2023. Hummingbird community structure and resources modulate the response of interspecific competition to forest conversion. Oecologia, 201:761–770. (Link to paper)
Ian McFadden*, Agnieszka Sendek*, Morgane Brosse, Peter Bach, Marco Baity-Jesi, Janine Bolliger, Kurt Bollmann, Eckehard Brockerhoff, Giulia Donati, Friederike Gebert, Shyamolina Ghosh, Hsi-Cheng Ho, Imran Khaliq, Jelle Lever, Ivana Logar, Helen Moor, Daniel Odermatt, Loïc Pellissier, Luiz de Queiroz, Christian Rixen, Nele Schuwirth, Ryan Shipley, Cornelia Twining, Yann Vitasse, Christoph Vorburger, Mark Wong, Niklaus Zimmermann, Ole Seehausen, Martin Gossner, Blake Matthews, Catherine Graham, Florian Altermatt, Anita Narwani. 2022. Linking human impacts to community processes in terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems. Ecology Letters, 26:203-218. (Link to paper, *equal effort, selected as cover article, press release)
Luiz de Queiroz, Carmela Doenz, Florian Altermatt, Roman Alther, Špela Borko, Jakob Brodersen, Martin Gossner, Catherine Graham, Blake Matthews, Ian McFadden, Loïc Pellissier, Thomas Schmitt, Oliver Selz, Soraya Villalba, Lukas Rüber, Niklaus Zimmermann, Ole Seehausen. 2022. Climate, immigration and speciation shape terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity in the European Alps. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 289:20221020. (Link to paper)
Ian McFadden, Susanne Fritz, Niklaus Zimmermann, Loïc Pellissier, Daniel Kissling, Joseph Tobias, Matthias Schleuning, Catherine Graham. 2022. Global plant-frugivore trait matching is shaped by climate and biogeographic history. Ecology Letters, 25:686-696. (Link to paper, press release, part of special issue on avian traits featured on the cover, covered by the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Austrian Press Agency, Blick, Züri Today etc., link to data, link to code)
Jens Kattge, Gerhard Bönisch, Sandra Díaz, Sandra Lavorel … Ian McFadden (729 authors total) … Christian Wirth. 2020. TRY plant trait database - enhanced coverage and open access. Global Change Biology, 26:119-188. (Link to paper, invited contribution to 25th anniversary special issue, commentary by Fraser 2020)
Ian McFadden, Brody Sandel, Constantinos Tsirogiannis, Naia Morueta-Holme, Jens-Christian Svenning, Brian Enquist, Nathan Kraft. 2019. Temperature shapes opposing latitudinal gradients of plant taxonomic and phylogenetic β diversity. Ecology Letters, 22:1126-1135. (Link to paper, selected as cover article, link to data)
Claire Fortunel, Ian McFadden, Renato Valencia, Nathan Kraft. 2019. Neither species geographic range size, climatic envelope nor intraspecific leaf trait variability capture habitat specialization in a hyperdiverse Amazonian forest. Biotropica, 51:304-310. (Link to paper, link to trait data)
Ian McFadden, Megan Bartlett, Thorsten Wiegand, Benjamin Turner, Lawren Sack, Renato Valencia, Nathan Kraft. 2018. Disentangling the functional trait correlates of spatial aggregation in tropical forest trees. Ecology, 100:E02591. (Link to paper, link to code, link to trait data)
Jeannine Cavender-Bares, Mary Arroyo, Robin Abell, David Ackerly … Ian McFadden (79 authors total) … Silvia Ziller. 2018. Chapter 3: Status, trends and future dynamics of biodiversity and ecosystems underpinning nature’s contributions to people. In The IPBES regional assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services for the Americas. Bonn, Germany, pp. 171-293. (Link to report, summary for policymakers, coverage by Nature, the Guardian, National Geographic etc.)
In revision
Ian McFadden, Marco Coelho, Rafael Wüest, Fernanda Cassemiro, Niklaus Zimmermann, Loïc Pellissier, Thiago Rangel, Catherine Graham. Global hotspots of recent and ancestral turnover in birds. (Preprint)
Imran Khaliq, Christian Rixen, Florian Zellweger, Blake Matthews, Catherine Graham, Martin Gossner, Ian McFadden, Laura Antao, Jakob Broderson, Shyamolina Ghosh, Francesco Pomati, Ole Seehausen, Tobias Roth, Thomas Sattler, Sarah Supp, Niklaus Zimmermann, Blake Matthews, Anita Narwani. Warming explains community turnover in freshwater and terrestrial communities.
Alke Voskamp, Susanne Fritz, Valerie Köcke, Matthias Biber, Timo Brockmeyer, Bastian Bertzky, Matthew Forrest, Angela Gaylard, Allie Goldstein, Scott Henderson, Thomas Hickler, Christian Hof, Thomas Kastner, Stefanie Lang, Peter Manning, Mike Mascia, Ian McFadden, Aidin Niamir, Monica Noon, Brian O’Donell, Mark Opel, Sophie Peter, Georg Schwede, Peyton West, Christof Schenck, Katrin Böhning-Gaese. How to resolve conflicting conservation objectives: A decision support tool for the global selection of multi-purpose protected areas. (Preprint)
Loïc Pellissier, Lydian Boschman, Catherine Graham, Oskar Hagen, Roland Jansson, Lisha Lyu, Ian McFadden, Thiago Rangel, Christopher Scotese, Zhiheng Wang, Niklaus Zimmermann, Charles de Santana, Albouy Camille. Looking beyond latitude: Quantifying longitudinal diversity patterns to infer biodiversity dynamics through time.
In preparation
Ian McFadden, Florian Altermatt, Fabio Benedetti, Martin Gossner, Catherine Graham, Nicolas Gruber, Martina Hobi, Blake Matthews, Loïc Pellissier, Luiz Jardim de Queiroz, Damiano Righetti, Meike Vogt, Tom Wohlgemuth, Ole Seehausen, Niklaus Zimmermann. Unpacking the land-sea biodiversity paradox with a 300,000 species dataset.
Open datasets and code
Global plant-frugivore trait matching, GitHub repository archived on Zenodo
R code and data to reproduce: McFadden et al. 2022a Ecology Letters
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5552240
Global avian frugivore bill gape size dataset, Dryad
Data from: McFadden et al. 2022a Ecology Letters
https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.tqjq2bw05
New World plant phylogeny and occurrence dataset, Dryad
Data from: McFadden et al. 2019 Ecology Letters
https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.n42g840
Leaf drought tolerance and mechanical toughness dataset, TRY plant trait database
Tropical tree functional trait data for 454 Amazonian species
https://doi.org/10.17871/TRY.19
Leaf intra-specific trait variation dataset, TRY plant trait database (co-PI with N. Kraft)
Traits for 43 Amazonian tree species with large numbers of individuals sampled per species
https://doi.org/10.17871/TRY.22
Trait correlates of spatial aggregation, code from McFadden et al. 2018 Ecology
R functions to implement decision tree for spatial point process models of stem patterns
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2092062
UCLA trait transects
GitHub repository from Ecology course ‘discussion-lab’
https://github.com/IanMcFadden/UCLA_Trait_Transects