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Professor Philip Stephens | |
Contact details Department of Biosciences, University of Durham, South Road, Durham, DH1 3LE. Phone: +44 (0)191 334 9102 (Internal 49102, Room 206) Fax: +44 (0)117 334 1201 E-Mail: Philip.Stephens “at” durham.ac.uk Conservation Ecology Group page Research interests Behavioural modelling Citizen science Conservation of endangered species Dispersal, group-living and territoriality Energetics, behaviour and demography Vertebrate population dynamics | ![]() |



Education and employment
2020 – present | Professor, Department of Biosciences, Durham University |
2017 – 2020 | Associate Professor (Reader), Department of Biosciences, Durham University |
2015 – 2016 | Panel member, Science Panel to Quality Assure the UK and England Biodiversity Indicators, Defra |
2014 – present | Senior Editor, Journal of Applied Ecology |
2011 – 2017 | Senior Lecturer, School of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, University of Durham |
2007 – 2011 | Lecturer, School of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, University of Durham |
2004 – 2007 | NERC postdoc, Department of Mathematics, University of Bristol |
2002 – 2004 | USDA Forest Service postdoc, Department of Zoology & Physiology, University of Wyoming |
2002 | DEFRA postdoc, School of Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia |
1998 – 2002 | PhD, University of East Anglia |
1996 – 1997 | MSc (Distinction): Conservation Biology, Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology |
1990 – 1993 | BSc: Zoology, University of Bristol |
- Selected recent publications (for a full list of publications and links to reprints, click here).Howard, C., Flather, C.H. & Stephens, P.A. (2020) A global assessment of the drivers of threatened terrestrial species richness. Nature Communications 11, 993.
- Stephens, P.A. et al. (2019) The limits to population density in birds and mammals. Ecology Letters 22, 654-663.
- Stephens, P.A. (2018) Ecology: Luck, Scarcity, and the Fate of Populations. Current Biology 28, R1384-1386.
- Stephens, P.A. et al. (2016) Consistent response of bird populations to climate change on two continents. Science 352, 84-87.
- Stephens, P.A. “Population Viability Analysis”. Oxford Bibliographies in Ecology. Ed. David Gibson. New York: Oxford University Press, 25/02/2016. doi: 10.1093/OBO/9780199830060-0142.
- Stephens, P.A. (2015) Land sparing, land sharing, and the fate of Africa’s lions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 112, 14753-14754.
- Stephens, P.A. et al. (2014) Capital and income breeding: the role of food supply. Ecology 95, 882-896.
Peer review
I am currently a Senior Editor for the Journal of Applied Ecology, a member of the NERC Peer Review College and a member of the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology grant panel. I was formerly a handling editor for Endangered Species Research and a member of the Royal Society’s International Exchanges panel. In addition, I have reviewed for a range of journals, including: American Naturalist; Animal Behaviour; Animal Conservation; Behavioral Ecology; Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology; Biology Letters; Biological Reviews; Conservation Letters; Ecological Modelling; Ecology; Ecology Letters; Global Change Biology; Journal of Animal Ecology; Mammal Review; Methods in Ecology & Evolution; Nature Climate Change; Nature Communications; Oikos; Oryx; PLoS One; Population Ecology; PNAS; Science; and Wildlife Research. I have also reviewed book proposals for Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press; grant proposals for ESRC and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC); and reports for DEFRA.