Professor David Atkinson Ph.D.

Personal Statement

My passion is to understand and predict adaptive responses of organisms, and impacts on ecosystems, arising from widespread environmental change (e.g. climate, eutrophication).

Our investigations focus particularly on adaptation to temperature, and the fundamental impacts of body size, temperature, and resource flux on rates of biological processes at levels of organization ranging from individuals to ecosystems.

These biological processes include resource uptake, growth, development, population growth, ecosystem respiration and photosynthesis.

Working at the interface of ecology, evolution and physiology, we advance new theory, including novel metabolic scaling theory; perform experiments on whole ecosystems and populations; and carry out biological and ecological syntheses (meta-analyses) to quantify global trends.

Prizes or Honours

• Co-Chair of Gordon Research Conference (Frontiers of Science) (Gordon Research Conference, Metabolic Basis of Ecology, 2010)
• Vice Chair of Gordon Research Conference (Frontiers of Science) (Gordon Research Conference - Metabolic Basis of Ecology, USA, 2008)
• First Prize (Best Poster) in General Animal Biology Symposium (Society for Experimental Biology, 2008)
• Member of Editorial Board, Journal of Thermal Biology (Journal of Thermal Biology, 2007)