Researcher biography

April Reside is a lecturer in the School of the Environment and School of Agriculture and Food Sustainability, affiliated with the Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science.

Dr Reside's research encompasses ecology, conservation, and policy; investigating refuges and refugia; and recovery actions and their costs for Australia's threatened species. April also works on conservation of woodland bird communities, the impact of climate change on biodiversity, and strategies for climate change adaptation. This work has involved applying conservation planning frameworks to identify spatial priorities for climate change adaptation for biodiversity and carbon sequestration.

April has a particular fascination of flying vertebrates, and has worked on bats on three continents and nine countries. She worked as a field ecologist for non-government organisations before her PhD on understanding potential impacts of climate change on Australian tropical savanna birds. She adapted species distribution modelling techniques to account for temporal and spatial variability in the distributions of highly vagile bird species. These dynamic species distribution models take into account species' responses to fluctuations in weather and short-term climatic conditions rather than long-term climate averages. In her first postdoctoral position, Dr Reside modelled the distribution of c.1700 vertebrates across Australia at a fine resolution, and located the future location of suitable climate for all these species for each decade until 2085. From this, she identified hotspots across Australia where species were moving to in order to track their suitable climate, informing the IUCN SSC Guidelines for Assessing Species' Vulnerability to Climate Change by the IUCN Species Survival Commission.

April has been involved in conservation of the Black-throated Finch for over 12 years, and is Chair of the Black-throated Finch Recovery Team. She has served on Birdlife Australia's Research and Conservation Committee and Threatened Species Committee; and the Science Committee for the Invasive Species Council.