Jack Hatfield

Natural Environment Research Council Independent Research Fellow

jack.hatfield@york.ac.uk

Biography

My PhD (Imperial College London) examined the effects of land-use change on the Brazilian Atlantic Forest avifauna, followed by a short post-doctoral position researching avian frugivore dispersal in degraded Amazonian and Atlantic forest systems. I then moved to the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, as a statistical ecologist analysing abundance and occupancy data for a wide range of UK species. This was followed by work as a spatial ecological modeller focusing on ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes. My work at LCAB covers a range of topics centred around the complexities of biodiversity change in the Anthropocene.

Research

My research background is in community and landscape ecology, investigating how species communities are altered by land-use change. I am also interested in functional ecology from species traits and functional diversity to ecosystem functions.

My work is currently focused on understanding biotic homogenisation – the process by which once distinct ecological communities are becoming increasingly similar over time. I will explore patterns of homogenisation and its opposite differentiation, in order to determine the species and locations driving these patterns. By incorporating major drivers of global change such as land-use and introduced species, I aim to create a new global causal framework to enable new insights into rapidly changing biodiversity dynamics.

Publication highlights

Thomas, C.D., Hatfield, J.H., Gordon, J.D., Deng, S., Sammy, J.M. and Martins, I.S., 2026. Anthropocene biodiversity change. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 51.

Hatfield, J.H., Cunningham, C.A., Pettersson, H.L., Barnes, L., Thomas, C.D. and Hill, J.K., 2026. Delivering resilience for people and nature in Anthropocene landscapes. People and Nature.

Hatfield, J.H., Gordon, J.D., Beale, C.M. and Thomas, C.D., 2026. Species contributions to biotic homogenisation and differentiation. Global ecology and biogeography, 35(1), p.e70195.

Hatfield, J.H., Allen, B.J., Carroll, T., Dean, C.D., Deng, S., Gordon, J.D., Guillerme, T., Hansford, J.P., Hoyal Cuthill, J.F., Mannion, P.D. and Martins, I.S., 2025. The greatest extinction event in 66 million years? Contextualising Anthropogenic extinctions. Global change biology, 31(9), p.e70476.

Funder

NERC