Dr Philip Barton is an ecologist with expertise in insect biodiversity and the role of insects in ecosystems. Dr Barton has developed interdisciplinary research projects and collaborations within Australia and internationally to examine how insects contribute to the decomposition of animal carcasses, how they can inform forensic investigations, and how they can be used as indicators of environmental change and landscape restoration.
Philip’s research has a strong applied focus and provides information to government agencies and land managers. He has published over 100 research articles and book chapters on insects, landscape ecology, decomposition and biodiversity, and has received funding from the Australian Research Council, Hermon-Slade Foundation and Australian Academy of Science. He supervises the research of several PhD students, and is an Editor at the journal Austral Ecology.
Bridging the gap between decomposition theory and forensic research on postmortem interval
Responses of necrophilous beetles to animal mass mortality in the Australian Alps
The ephemeral resource patch concept
Climate-driven divergent long-term trends of forest beetles in Japan
How does mass loss compare with total body score when assessing decomposition of human and pig cadavers?
Insect abundance patterns on vertebrate remains reveal carrion resource quality variation
Introduction to the Insect Ecology Special Issue
Priority effects and density promote coexistence between the facultative predator Chrysomya rufifacies and its competitor Calliphora stygia
The predatory impacts of invasive European wasps on flies are facilitated by carcasses with open wounds
What's hot and what's not – Identifying publication trends in insect ecology
Research disciplines in science have historically developed in silos but are increasingly...
Ant community responses to farmland use and revegetation in a fragmented agricultural landscape
ecent alarming losses of insects from agricultural landscapes in multiple countries around the...
Convergence of Social Strategies in Carrion Breeding Insects
Ecological processes associated with different animal taxa in urban environments
Field succession studies and casework can help to identify forensically useful Diptera
How bioregional history could shape the future of agriculture
Biodiversity conservation and agriculture are becoming intimately intertwined. Wildlife-friendly...
Is resource change a useful predictor of carrion insect succession on pigs and humans?
Limited understanding of bushfire impacts on Australian invertebrates
Understanding how increasing risk of frequent and severe fires affects biodiversity and ecosystem...
Monitoring the dead as an ecosystem indicator
Dead animal biomass (carrion) is present in all terrestrial ecosystems, and its consumption,...
Outfoxing the fox: Effect of prey odor on fox behavior in a pastoral landscape
Temperature dynamics in different body regions of decomposing vertebrate remains
A reintroduced ecosystem engineer provides a germination niche for native plant species
Grasslands and grassy woodlands worldwide have experienced declines in extent and condition, with...
Conserving focal insect groups in woodland remnants: The role of landscape context and habitat structure on cross-taxonomic congruence
Determining the shared responses of different taxa to landscape modification is a key step for...
Contrasting insect activity and decomposition of pigs and humans in an Australian environment: A preliminary study
Non-human vertebrate animals, primarily domestic pigs, have been widely used in forensic science...
Echoing the Need to Quantify Carrion Biomass Production
[No abstract available]
Flower visitation and land cover associations of above ground- and below ground-nesting native bees in an agricultural region of south-east Australia
How different forms of agriculture support different bee taxa through the provision of different...
Invasive European wasps alter scavenging dynamics around carrion
European wasps (Vespula germanica) have invaded parts of North and South America, Australia and...
Invertebrate Succession in Natural Terrestrial Environments
Pollination and resource limitation as interacting constraints on almond fruit set
Pollination and resource availability are factors determining reproductive success of plants, and...
Quantifying shifts in topic popularity over 44 years of Austral Ecology
The Ecological Society of Australia was founded in 1959, and the society’s journal was first...
Scientists' warning to humanity on insect extinctions
Here we build on the manifesto ‘World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity, issued by the Alliance of...
Soil chemical markers distinguishing human and pig decomposition islands: a preliminary study
The decomposition of vertebrate cadavers on the soil surface produces nutrient-rich fluids that...
Solutions for humanity on how to conserve insects
The fate of humans and insects intertwine, especially through the medium of plants. Global...
Traits reveal ecological strategies driving carrion insect community assembly
The succession of carrion-associated (necrophilous) insects on decomposing carrion is well...
Using ecological niche theory to avoid uninformative biodiversity surrogates
Surrogates and indicators of biodiversity are used to infer the state and dynamics of species...
Avian functional responses to landscape recovery
Restoring native vegetation in agricultural landscapes can reverse biodiversity declines via...
Beetle ecological indicators – A comparison of cost vs reward to understand functional changes in response to restoration actions
Ecosystem restoration can play a vital role in conserving biodiversity, but its effectiveness can...
Carrion Decomposition
The decomposition of carrion is central to the functioning of ecosystems and the recycling of...
Contrasting effects of mosaic structure on alpha and beta diversity of bird assemblages in a human-modified landscape
Habitat loss and fragmentation are key processes causing biodiversity loss in human-modified...
Dynamic soil nutrient and moisture changes under decomposing vertebrate carcasses
The decomposition of animal carcasses contributes to nutrient recycling in ecosystems worldwide,...
Effects of digging by a native and introduced ecosystem engineer on soil physical and chemical properties in temperate grassy woodland
Temperate grasslands and woodlands are the focus of extensive restoration efforts worldwide....
Higher-taxon and functional group responses of ant and bird assemblages to livestock grazing: A test of an explicit surrogate concept
Biodiversity monitoring programs are routinely established to quantify changes in biotic...
How practitioners integrate decision triggers with existing metrics in conservation monitoring
Decision triggers are defined thresholds in the status of monitored variables that indicate when...
Interactive effects of land use, grazing and environment on frogs in an agricultural landscape
Improved management of human-modified landscapes must be part of global efforts to combat...
Invertebrate scavengers matter
Invertebrate Scavenging Communities
Invertebrate scavengers of terrestrial and aquatic carrion include a broad and enormously diverse...
Managing uncertainty in movement knowledge for environmental decisions
Species’ movements affect their response to environmental change but movement knowledge is often...
Necrobiome framework for bridging decomposition ecology of autotrophically and heterotrophically derived organic matter
Decomposition contributes to global ecosystem function by contributing to nutrient recycling,...
Novel bird responses to successive, large-scale, landscape transformations
Transformation of intact vegetation into new kinds and configurations of human-modified habitats...
Nutrient and moisture transfer to insect consumers and soil during vertebrate decomposition
Decomposition of organic matter leads to the redistribution of nutrients to organisms and the...
The use and utility of surrogates in biodiversity monitoring programmes
Towards Quantifying Carrion Biomass in Ecosystems
The decomposition of animal biomass (carrion) contributes to the recycling of energy and...
A long-term habitat fragmentation experiment leads to morphological change in a species of carabid beetle
Habitat fragmentation and transformation are key drivers of species declines in landscapes. Most...
Beetle’s responses to edges in fragmented landscapes are driven by adjacent farmland use, season and cross-habitat movement
Context: Farming practices influence the degree of contrast between adjoining habitats, with...
Conservation conundrums and the challenges of managing unexplained declines of multiple species
The conventional approach to conserving threatened biota is to identify drivers of decline,...
Cross-taxonomic surrogates for biodiversity conservation in human-modified landscapes – A multi-taxa approach
Cross-taxonomic surrogates are often used in conservation planning because inventorying large...
Direct and Indirect Effects of Herbivore Activity on Australian Vegetation
Australian Vegetation has been an essential reference for students and researchers in botany,...
Disentangling the effects of farmland use, habitat edges, and vegetation structure on ground beetle morphological traits
Land-use change due to agriculture has a major influence on arthropod biodiversity, and may...
Dynamic effects of ground-layer plant communities on beetles in a fragmented farming landscape
Vegetation effects on arthropods are well recognized, but it is unclear how different vegetation...
Effects of fire regime on plant species richness and composition differ among forest, woodland and heath vegetation
Question: Do the effects of fire regimes on plant species richness and composition differ among...
Reptiles and frogs use most land cover types as habitat in a fine-grained agricultural landscape
Agricultural landscapes comprise much of the earth's terrestrial surface. However, knowledge...
Seal carrion is a predictable resource for coastal ecosystems
The timing, magnitude, and spatial distribution of resource inputs can have large effects on...
Species co-occurrence networks show reptile community reorganization under agricultural transformation
Agricultural transformation represents one of the greatest threats to biodiversity, causing...
Surrogates underpin ecological understanding and practice
Tests of predictions associated with temporal changes in Australian bird populations
Global biodiversity loss is the cumulative result of local species declines. To combat...
Contrasting beetle assemblage responses to cultivated farmlands and native woodlands in a dynamic agricultural landscape
There is an urgent need to identify ways of managing agricultural landscapes for biodiversity...
Does wing morphology affect recolonization of restored farmland by ground-dwelling beetles?
Revegetation of previously cleared land is widely used to increase habitat area and connectivity...
Effects of a large wildfire on vegetation structure in a variable fire mosaic
Management guidelines for many fire-prone ecosystems highlight the importance of maintaining a...
Effects of ecological restoration on soil microbial diversity in a temperate grassy woodland
Soil microbial communities are often overlooked in the context of ecological restoration. Given...
Effects of past and present livestock grazing on herpetofauna in a landscape-scale experiment
Livestock grazing is the most widespread land use on Earth and can have negative effects on...
Environmental and spatial drivers of spider diversity at contrasting microhabitats
The relative importance of environmental and spatial drivers of animal diversity varies across...
Fine-scale drivers of beetle diversity are affected by vegetation context and agricultural history
Environmental gradients have been shown to affect animal diversity, but knowledge of fine-scale...
Insect biodiversity meets ecosystem function: differential effects of habitat and insects on carrion decomposition
Ecological processes are maintained in different environments by different species performing...
Necrophilous insect dynamics at small vertebrate carrion in a temperate eucalypt woodland
Insects associated with carrion are critical to the decomposition process and nutrient cycling in...
Optimal taxonomic groups for biodiversity assessment: a meta-analytic approach
A fundamental decision in biodiversity assessment is the selection of one or more study taxa, a...
Remnant vegetation, plantings and fences are beneficial for reptiles in agricultural landscapes
Managing agricultural landscapes for biodiversity conservation is increasingly difficult as land...
Birds as surrogates for mammals and reptiles: Are patterns of cross-taxonomic associations stable over time in a human-modified landscape?
Cross-taxonomic surrogates can be feasible alternatives to direct measurements of biodiversity in...
Do temporal changes in vegetation structure additional to time since fire predict changes in bird occurrence?
Fire is a major ecological process in ecosystems globally. Its impacts on fauna can be both...
Effects of environmental variation and livestock grazing on ant community structure in temperate eucalypt woodlands
Grazing by livestock is a major ecological disturbance, with potential effects on vegetation,...
Evaluating the effectiveness of overstory cover as a surrogate for bird community diversity and population trends
Landscape features are often used as surrogates for biodiversity. While landscape features may...
Herbivory and fire interact to affect forest understory habitat, but not its use by small vertebrates
Herbivory and fire are two disturbances that often co-occur, but studies of their interactive...
Incorporating regional-scale ecological knowledge to improve the effectiveness of large-scale conservation programmes
Land-stewardship programmes are a major focus of investment by governments for conserving...
Integrating theory into disturbance interaction experiments to better inform ecosystem management
Managing multiple, interacting disturbances is a key challenge to biodiversity conservation, and...
Long-term bird colonization and turnover in restored woodlands
The long-term effectiveness of restored areas for biodiversity is poorly known for the majority...
Substantial long-Term effects of carcass addition on soil and plants in a grassy eucalypt woodland
The decomposition of large vertebrate carcasses generates small-scale disturbances characterized...
Temporal trends in mammal responses to fire reveals the complex effects of fire regime attributes
Fire is a major ecological process in many ecosystems worldwide. We sought to identify which...
Two roles for ecological surrogacy: Indicator surrogates and management surrogates
Ecological surrogacy - here defined as using a process or element (e.g., species, ecosystem, or...
WILDLIFE CONSERVATION IN FARM LANDSCAPES
Novel perspectives on integrating farming practices and wildlife conservation and other...
A new framework for selecting environmental surrogates
Surrogate concepts are used in all sub-disciplines of environmental science. However, controversy...
Can coarse woody debris be used for carbon storage in open grazed woodlands?
Carbon dioxide off-setting policy in the agricultural sector is focused on manipulating the...
Can habitat surrogates predict the response of target species to landscape change?
Surrogates are commonly used for monitoring biodiversity under a wide range of scenarios....
Effects of fire on vegetation and arthropods in a coastal heath, south-east Queensland
Fire is an important part of many Australian ecosystems, and determining how it affects different...
Guidelines for Using Movement Science to Inform Biodiversity Policy
Substantial advances have been made in our understanding of the movement of species, including...
Indicators and Surrogates of Biodiversity and Environmental Change
Ecological surrogates and indicators are used widely by resource managers because they provide a...
Interactive effects of fire and large herbivores on web-building spiders
Altered disturbance regimes are a major driver of biodiversity loss worldwide. Maintaining or...
Learning from clinical medicine to improve the use of surrogates in ecology
Surrogates are used widely in ecology to detect or monitor changes in the environment that are...
Richness is not all: How changes in avian functional diversity reflect major landscape modification caused by pine plantations
Aim: To quantify changes over a 15-year period in bird functional diversity within woodland...
Synergistic interactions between fire and browsing drive plant diversity in a forest understorey
Questions: Does browsing by large herbivores affect forest understorey diversity by modifying...
Text analysis tools for identification of emerging topics and research gaps in conservation science
Keeping track of conceptual and methodological developments is a critical skill for research...
The role of carrion in ecosystems
Carrion, in the broadest sense, is nonliving animal tissue. It is the product of the death of...
10.1111/emr.12136
Fire is an important part of many Australian ecosystems, and determining how it affects different...
An empirical assessment and comparison of species-based and habitat-based surrogates: A case study of forest vertebrates and large old trees
A holy grail of conservation is to find simple but reliable measures of environmental change to...
An Empirical Assessment of the Focal Species Hypothesis
Biodiversity surrogates and indicators are commonly used in conservation management. The focal...
Bird community responses to the edge between suburbs and reserves
New insights into community-level responses at the urban fringe, and the mechanisms underlying...
Carrion decomposition causes large and lasting effects on soil amino acid and peptide flux
Carrion decomposition is a critical component of the biogeochemical cycling of energy and...
Contrasting diversity dynamics of phoretic mites and beetles associated with vertebrate carrion
Carrion is an ephemeral and nutrient-rich resource that attracts a diverse array of arthropods as...
Cross-sectional and temporal relationships between bird occupancy and vegetation cover at multiple spatial scales
Scale is a key concept in ecology, but the statistically based quantification of scale effects...
Dominant drivers of seedling establishment in a fire-dependent obligate seeder: Climate or fire regimes?
Climate change is causing fire regime shifts in ecosystems worldwide. Plant species with...
Global meta-analysis reveals low consistency of biodiversity congruence relationships
Knowledge of the number and distribution of species is fundamental to biodiversity conservation...
Multi-scale associations between vegetation cover and woodland bird communities across a large agricultural region
Improving biodiversity conservation in fragmented agricultural landscapes has become an important...
Robustness of habitat-based surrogates of animal diversity: A multitaxa comparison over time
Many animal taxa respond strongly to spatial and temporal variation in vegetation structure and...
The law of diminishing returns: Woodland birds respond to native vegetation cover at multiple spatial scales and over time
Aim: To quantify at multiple spatial scales: (1) spatial dependence in several measures of...
The trajectory of dispersal research in conservation biology. Systematic review
Dispersal knowledge is essential for conservation management, and demand is growing. But are we...
Vegetation structure moderates the effect of fire on bird assemblages in a heterogeneous landscape
Ecological theory predicting the impact of fire on ecological communities is typically focused on...
Visualization of species pairwise associations: A case study of surrogacy in bird assemblages
Quantifying and visualizing species associations are important to many areas of ecology and...
Arthropod assemblages in a focal tree species (Eucalyptus microcarpa) depends on the species mix in restoration plantings
The composition of arthropods in trees has long been a topic of interest, with many studies...
Conceptual domain of the matrix in fragmented landscapes
In extensively modified landscapes, how the matrix is managed determines many conservation...
Grassland area determines beetle assemblage dissimilarity from surrounding floodplain forest
Patch size is known to affect biodiversity in fragmented landscapes, but is usually examined in...
Species Traits Predict Assemblage Dynamics at Ephemeral Resource Patches Created by Carrion
Carrion is an ephemeral and spatially patchy resource that supports a diverse subset of species...
The role of carrion in maintaining biodiversity and ecological processes in terrestrial ecosystems
animal matter and recycling its nutrients. A growing number of studies have also shown various...
The spatial scaling of beta diversity
Beta diversity is an important concept used to describe turnover in species composition across a...
Experimental reduction of native vertebrate grazing and addition of logs benefit beetle diversity at multiple scales
High densities of vertebrate herbivores can be a significant barrier to ecological restoration in...
Morphological traits as predictors of diet and microhabitat use in a diverse beetle assemblage
We explored how morphological traits can complement phylogenetic information to extend our...
What Makes a Good Farm for Wildlife?
Fine-scale heterogeneity in beetle assemblages under co-occurring Eucalyptus in the same subgenus
Aim: Insect biodiversity is often positively associated with habitat heterogeneity. However, this...
Conserving ground-dwelling beetles in an endangered woodland community: Multi-scale habitat effects on assemblage diversity
Patterns of biodiversity are influenced by habitat features at multiple spatial scales, yet few...
Mosquito (Diptera: Culicidae) and rainfallassociations with arbovirus disease in Eastern Victoria
Associations between mosquito abundance and Ross River virus (RRV) and Barmah Forest virus (BFV)...
A new species of sucking louse (Phthiraptera: Anoplura) from Australia, and a key to the Australian species of Hoplopleura
A new species of sucking louse, Hoplopleura zyzomydis, is described and illustrated from the...
Larval development and autogeny in Ochlerotatus camptorhynchus (Thomson) (Diptera: Culicidae) from southern Victoria
Larval development and autogeny was examined in the mosquito Ochlerotatus camptorhynchus...
Spatial and temporal definition of Ochlerotatus camptorhynchus (Thomson) (Diptera: Culicidae) in the Gippsland Lakes system of eastern Victoria
The confirmed vector of Ross River virus, Ochlerotatus camptorhynchus (Thomson), is the dominant...
Spatial and temporal distribution of Culex australicus Dobrotworsky and Drummond and Culex globocoxitus Dobrotworsky (Diptera: Culicidae) at the Gippsland Lakes in eastern Victoria
This paper re-examines previously published data on general mosquito numbers from the Gippsland...