Research Fellow
I am a Wellcome/Royal Society Sir Henry Dale Research Fellow at the Institute of Zoology at the Zoological Society of London. I am an interdisciplinary, quantitative biologist who specialises in using big-data, computational approaches to understand broad scale problems associated with ongoing climate, land-use and human socio-economic change. In my work I try to bring together spatial and historical datasets from many different disciplines to answer globally important questions. One of my main priorities is zoonotic disease (e.g. Ebola, Lassa Fever, Covid-19), and for this work I have developed an integrated modelling framework to merge ecological and epidemiological approaches for assessing disease risk, which can be used to test the impacts of global change on many different zoonotic diseases across the world.
My original training was as an ecologist and conservation biologist. My PhD work was based on understanding the role of evolutionary biology in making conservation decisions, creating the same fundamental approach that was used for ZSL’s EDGE of Existence programme. I also maintain an interest in understanding how species invade into landscapes, focussing on alien bird species. For several aspects of my research I work closely with colleagues at the Centre for Biodiversity and Environment Research (CBER) at UCL.
I am always looking for new research students and interesting research collaborations. Please get in touch (david.redding@ioz.ac.uk) if you would like to discuss this further. I supervise several students through DTPs (such as the London NERC DTP, Imperial QMEE CDT, Imperial SSCP DTP, London LIDo DTP) which may offer opportunities for doctoral funding.
Research Interests
- Global Biodiversity Change
- Zoonotic disease
- Invasive and alien species
- Conservation priority setting
- Disease spill-over
- Climate change
- Land-use Change
Publications
- See my Google Scholar page
Some selected recent publications
Gibb R, Franklinos L, Redding DW, Jones KE. 2020. Ecosystem perspectives are needed to manage zoonotic disease risks under climate change. The British Medical Journal 371: m3389.
Gibb R, Redding DW (joint first authors), Chin KQ, Blackburn TM, Newbold T, Jones KE. 2020. Land use has global and systematic effects on local zoonotic host communities. Nature 584: 398–402.
Redding DW, Lo Iacono G, Moses L, Cunningham AA, Woods J, Jones KE. 2019. Impact of global change on Ebola emergence and epidemic potential in Africa. Nature Communications 10: 4531
Redding DW, Pigot A, Dyer E, Sekercioglu C, Kark S, Blackburn TM. 2019. Location, species and event level processes drive the establishment of alien bird invasions globally. Nature 571: 103–106.
Franklinos L, Jones KE, Redding DW, Abubakar I. 2019. The impact of global change on mosquito-borne disease. Lancet Infectious Diseases doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(19)30161-6.
Lo Iacono G, Bett B, Cunningham AA, Grace D, Redding DW, Woods J. 2018. The environmental limits of Rift Valley Fever revealed using eco-epidemiological mechanistic models. PNAS 115(31): E7448-E7456.
Waldron A, Kuhn TS, Redding DW, Mooers AØ, Miller DC, Nibbelink N, Roberts JT, Gittleman JL. 2017. Reductions in global biodiversity loss predicted from conservation spending. Nature 551 (7680), 364-365.
Gibb R, Moses LM, Redding DW, Jones KE. 2017. Understanding the cryptic nature of Lassa fever in West Africa. Pathogens and Global Health DOI: 10.1080/20477724.2017.1369643.
Redding DW, Tiedt S, Cunningham AA, Woods J, Jones KE. 2017. Spatial and seasonal predictive models of Rift Valley Fever disease. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2016.0165.
Redding DW, Moses L, Cunningham AA, Woods J, Jones KE. 2016. Predicting the impact of global change on emergence of zoonotic disease: A case study of Lassa fever. Methods in Ecology and Evolution DOI:/10.1111/2041-210X.12549.
