Ryan Burke

Ryan Burke

I am most interested in research applicable to conservation management that incorporates field work and natural history documentation in undersampled and threatened ecosystems. This includes global change biogeography (e.g. climate change, habitat loss and fragmentation), landscape ecology, and the sustainable management of ecosystems. My current doctoral research focuses on the role of mammalian community composition and intactness in the ecological functioning of the Ethiopian Highlands. I work most closely with the gramnivorous Gelada monkey, and work on many classic herbivore ecology questions rarely explored in primates. In pursuing these interests, I use a diverse set of tools ranging from biogeochemistry, kite-based aerial surveying, and animal movement monitoring (and of course my trusty binoculars and an all-weather notebook).

Before coming to Oxford, I completed an M.Sc. in Biological Anthropology at the University of Toronto (2013). My project focused on ecological impacts at the microhabitat scale of forest fragmentation and edge effects on two sympatric mouse lemur species. In 2010, I finished a B.Sc. in Environmental Science (Conservation Biology) at the University of Ottawa. That degree culminated in a thesis project where I derived a mobility index of Canadian butterfly species subsequently useful in incorporating dispersal into predicting species’ abilities to respond to climate change.

Selected Publications

Burke, R.J., and S.M. Lehman. (2015). Edge effects on abundance and body mass in two species of mouse lemurs in northwest Madagascar. Folia Primatologica (Special Issue on Primate Biogeography). 85: 277-291. DOI: 10.1159/000360082.

Nguyen N., Fashing, P.J., Boyd, D.A., Barry, T.S., Burke, R.J., Goodale, C.B., Jones, S.C.Z., Kerby, J.T., Kellogg, B.S., Lee, L.M., Miller, C.M., Nurmi, N.O., Ramsay, M.S., Reynolds, J.D., Stewart, K.M., Turner, T.J., Venkataraman, V.V., Knauf, Y., Roos, C., Knauf, S (2015). Fitness impacts of tapeworm parasitism on wild gelada monkeys at Guassa, Ethiopia. American Journal of Primatology. DOI: 10.1002/ajp.22379

Valenta, K., Burke, R.J., Styler, S.A., Jackson, D., Melin, A.D., and Lehman, S.M. (2013). Colour and odour drive fruit selection and seed dispersal by mouse lemurs. Scientific Reports. 7: 31-36.

Burke, R.J., Fitzsimmons, J. M. and J.T. Kerr. (2011).  A mobility index for Canadian butterfly species based on naturalists’ knowledge. Biodiversity and Conservation. 20, 2273-2295. DOI: 10.1007/s10531-011-0088-y.