Dr Maria Beger

Profile

My Academic Background

• 2016-2020 University Academic Fellow, University of Leeds
• 2012-2016 Research Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, The University of Queensland, Australia
• 2008-2011 Postdocs: The University of Queensland, University of Melbourne, University of Tasmania
• 2002-2008 PhD Conservation Science, The University of Queensland, Australia
• 2000-2002 Australian-European Exchange Scholar, James Cook University, Australia
• 1996 Dipl.Ing. Groundwater Engineering, TU Dresden, Germany
• 1994 MSc Marine Resources Management & Conservation, Heriot Watt Uni, UK

My Science:

I am a conservation ecologist with complementary interests in coral reef ecology and spatial conservation prioritization. I mostly work in the Coral Triangle, the Pacific, the Western Indian Ocean, Japan and Australia.  I also work in projects dealing with fish biomass predictions, climate change science, ecosystem services, and global evaluations of protected areas. Current themes I work on are:

•     Integrating larval dispersal into spatial planning and conservation;
•     How can genetic data inform conservation decisions?
•     Managing whole life cycles in migratory animals: integrating telemetry into planning;
•     How can we model and manage coral reef resilience?
•     Multi-taxon community assembly rules along a tropical to temperate temperature gradient (Australia, Japan)
•     Managing range shifts;
•     How do pristine reefs differ (Republic of the Marshall Islands)?
•     Develop coastal and offshore bioregionalisations (South Pacific);
•     Quantifying human-ecological links in coastal ecosystems;
•     Which fish are here (fish species counts in Japan, Maldives, Philippines, Indonesia, PNG, Australia, Palau, FSM, Marshall Islands, ...)?

I collaborate with local and regional conservation NGOs, including The Nature Conservancy (Coral Triangle, Micronesia), IUCN (Pacific, Maldives), World Wildlife Fund (Malaysia), Marshall Islands Conservation Society (Republic of the Marshall Islands). I also work with government agencies, such as the NSW Department of Primary Industries and NSW Office of Environment and Heritage in Australia.

Research interests

I am a quantitative marine ecologist and conservation scientist integrating field data, spatial models and decision science to find conservation solutions that link theory and practice. 

Student education

Please contact me to discuss potential PhD  projects in the fields of:

• Marine ecology
• Spatial conservation planning
• Climate change ecology

See also:

• Faculty Graduate School

Current postgraduate researchers

• Morven Rae-Seaman

Projects

<li><a href="//phd.leeds.ac.uk/project/1669-assessing-demographic-resilience-of-tropical-and-temperate-reef-organisms">Assessing demographic resilience of tropical and temperate reef organisms</a></li>