Dr April Reside

Researcher biography
April Reside is a lecturer in Wildlife Science at the School of Agriculture & Food Sciences.
Dr Reside's research encompasses ecology, conservation, and policy. Recently she has worked with the National Environmental Science Programme's Threatened Species Recovery Hub, 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. This research fed into Natural Resource Management and government planning for climate change adaptation.
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 Australian Wildlife Conservancy before moving to Townsville to study savanna birds at James Cook University and CSIRO. Her PhD: "Assessing Climate Change Vulnerability: Novel methods for understanding potential impacts on Australian Tropical Savanna Birds" adapted species distribution modelling techniques to account for temporal and spatial variability in the distributions of highly vagile bird species. Dr Reside developed methods for dynamic species distribution modelling that could incorporate big data and hundreds of species at fine resolutions. The 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. Her work helped to inform 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 is also a member of the Research and Conservation Committee and Threatened Species Committee for Birdlife Australia.