Current Post: Professor

Room Number: 01.10A

Telephone: 01603 592549 (+44 1603 592549)

Fax: 01603 591327 (+44 1603 591327)

Email: c.peres@uea.ac.uk

Publications: EPrints Digital Repository

Posts of Special Responsibility:

• Sector Head - Environmental Biology

Research Interests

Large-scale patterns of large-bodied vertebrate diversity and abundance in Amazonian forests; effects of different forms on human disturbance, including hunting, habitat fragmentation, wildfires, natural regeneration, and fast-growing tree plantations on Amazonian biodiversity; reserve selection and design criteria in relation to regional gradients of biodiversity value and implementation costs.


Biography

Born in Belém, Brazil, I was exposed to Amazonian natural history from age seven and my father's landholding in eastern Pará, consisting largely of undisturbed primary forest, became a childhood playground. For the last 20 years I have been studying wildlife community ecology in Amazonian forests and the biological criteria for designing large nature reserves. I currently co-direct four ecology and conservation research programs in neotropical forests, including the ecology of key timber and non-timber forest resources; patterns of vertebrate assemblage structure in Amazonian forests; the biological dynamics of hyper-disturbed and fragmented forest landscapes, and the biodiversity consequences of land-use change. I have published ~150 papers on neotropical forest ecology and conservation at scales ranging from populations to landscapes, and to entire continents. In 1995, I received a "Biodiversity Conservation Leadership Award", and in 2000 was elected an "Environmentalist Leader for the New Millennium" by Time Magazine and CNN network. I am currently a Reader in conservation biology divide my time between Norwich and fieldwork at multiple field sites in lowland Amazonia.

Significant Publications

• Peres, C.A. et al. (2003). Demographic Threats to the Sustainability of Brazil Nut Exploitation. Science 302: 2112-2114. DOI: 10.1126/science.1091698
• Peres, C.A. & Lake, I.R. (2003). Extent of nontimber resource extraction in tropical forests: accessibility to game vertebrates by hunters in the Amazon basin. Conservation Biology 17:521-535.

• Barlow, J and C.A. Peres. (2004). Avifaunal responses to single and recurrent wildfires in Amazonian forests. Ecological Applications 14:1358–1373.

• Peres, C.A. (2001). Synergistic effects of subsistence hunting and habitat fragmentation on Amazonian forest vertebrates. Conservation Biology 15:1490-1505. DOI: 10.1046/j.1523-1739.2001.01089.x

• Laurance, W.F. and C.A. Peres, editors (2006). Emerging Threats to Tropical Forests. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. 520 p. [link]

• J. Barlow, T.A. Gardner, I.S. Araujo, T.C. Ávila-Pires, A.B. Bonaldo, J.E. Costa, M.C. Esposito, L.V. Ferreira, J. Hawes, M.I.M. Hernandez, M.S. Hoogmoed, R.N. Leite, N. F. Lo-Man-Hung, J.R. Malcolm, M.B. Martins, L.A.M. Mestre, R. Miranda-Santos, A.L. Nunes-Gutjahr, W.L. Overal, L. Parry, S.L. Peters, M.A. Ribeiro-Junior, M.N.F. da Silva, C. da Silva Motta, and C.A. Peres (2007) Quantifying the biodiversity value of tropical primary, secondary and plantation forests. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0703333104

Page last updated 25 October 2011