Louise McRae

Curriculum Vitae:

• 2006–Present: Postgraduate Research Assistant, preceded by a six month internship, Indicators and Assessments Unit, Institute of Zoology.
• 2004–2005: MSc Conservation Biology, Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology, University of Kent. Dissertation focused on conservation planning in the Maputaland region of Southern Africa.
• 1996–1999: BSc Biological Sciences (Biology and Psychology), University of Wales, Swansea.
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Research Interests:

My current role is centred on looking at global patterns of biodiversity over time. Specifically I work on a biodiversity indicator, the Living Planet Index (LPI) , which is a measure of the changing state of global biological diversity, based on abundance trends of vertebrate species from around the world.

Through the development of the method and increase in the data set behind the LPI over the past few years, I have been able to examine vertebrate trends for different regions of the world and for various subsets of species. Many of these results have been used to communicate biodiversity trends to a wide audience from policy makers, scientists to the general public. In addition, the LPI is one of the indicators adopted by the Convention on Biological Diversity as a means of measuring progress towards the target of significantly reducing the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010.

The LPI database currently holds in excess of 10,000 populations from over 2,000 species. My focus at the moment is to address the data gaps that currently exist in the database, to examine the scalability of the indicator at the national and regional level and to increase the flow of data from a network of data providers and to interested parties through the construction of an online database.
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Publications:

Collen B., Loh J., Whitmee S., McRae L., Amin R. & Baillie J.E.M. (2009) Monitoring change in vertebrate abundance: the Living Planet Index. Conservation Biology 23: 317-327.

McRae L, Loh J, Bubb PJ, Baillie JEM, Kapos V, Collen B (2009) The Living Planet Index - Guidance for National and Regional Use. UNEP-WCMC, Cambridge, UK

Latham J, Collen B, McRae L, Loh J. (2008) The Living Planet Index for Migratory Species: an index of change in population abundance. A report for the Convention on Migratory Species, UNEP.

Loh J, Collen B, McRae L, Carranza TT, Pamplin FA, Amin R and Baillie JEM (2008) Living Planet Index. Living Planet Report 2008 (ed. C Hails) WWF International: Gland, Switzerland. Download PDF

Collen, B., Ram, M., Zamin, T., and McRae, L. (2008) The tropical biodiversity data gap: addressing disparity in global monitoring. Tropical Conservation Science 1(2): 97-110. Download PDF

Collen, B., McRae, L., Kothari, G., Mellor, R., Daniel, O., Greenwood, A., Amin, R., Holbrook, S. and Baillie, J. (2008) Living Planet Index. 2010 and beyond: rising to the biodiversity challenge (ed. By J. Loh), WWF, Gland, Switzerland. Download PDF

McRae, L., Loh, J., Collen, B., Holbrook, S., Amin, R., Latham, J., Tranquilli, S. and Baillie, J. (2007) Living Planet Index. Canadian Living Planet Report 2007 (ed. By S. Mitchell and A. Peller), WWF-Canada, Toronto, Canada. Download PDF

Loh, J., Collen, B., McRae, L., Holbrook, S., Amin, R., Ram, M., and Baillie, J. (2006) Living Planet Index. Living Planet Report (ed. By J. Loh & S. Goldfinger), WWF, Gland, Switzerland. Download PDF