ProfessorJonathan Tonkin

I am a community ecologist and biodiversity scientist at Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha | University of Canterbury. My research focuses on understanding how ecological communities change across space and time, how ecosystems respond to environmental disturbances, and how biodiversity can be maintained in a rapidly changing world. I combine field experiments, ecological theory, advanced data analysis, and large-scale synthesis to uncover the processes that shape ecosystems and the species within them. 

 

Much of my work is centred on freshwater ecosystems, particularly rivers and streams, although my research extends across a wide range of ecological systems and disciplinary boundaries. By developing new approaches to understanding biodiversity patterns and ecosystem resilience, my research helps inform conservation, restoration, and management strategies that address global environmental challenges and support more sustainable futures. 

 

I have won a number of awards, including the NZ Prime Minister’s MacDiarmid Emerging Scientist Prize, the NZ Freshwater Sciences Society and University of Canterbury Early Career Researcher Awards, and a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship. My research has appeared in leading multidisciplinary (Nature, Science) and ecological (Nature Ecology & Evolution, Nature Water, Trends in Ecology & Evolution, Frontiers in Ecology & the Environment) journals. I currently serve as an associate editor at Frontiers in Ecology & the Environment, Freshwater Policy & Practice, and Water Biology & Security. 

 

I lead the Tonkin Lab, a diverse group of postdocs and postgraduate students, and am a Principal Investigator in Te Pūnaha Matatini, a New Zealand Centre of Research Excellence in Complex Systems. Together, we work with students and collaborators in New Zealand and internationally to tackle fundamental questions in ecology and find practical solutions to the joint biodiversity-climate crisis. 

 

For more details, please see https://tonkinlab.org. Subscribe to my newsletter: weekly future-focused writing on biodiversity, climate, and water for a changing world at https://predirections.substack.com.