Thomas EVANS

Much of my research focuses on the use of macroecology to improve our understanding of the distribution and impacts of alien species. I am a founding member of the IUCN EICAT Authority (http://www.iucngisd.org/gisd/about_eicat.php) which is a small international team of invasion scientists responsible for the development and implementation of a new methodology to quantify and categorise the environmental impacts of alien species: the Environmental Impact Classification for Alien Taxa (EICAT). EICAT was formally adopted by the IUCN in 2020, and we are now completing EICAT assessments for all known alien species worldwide.

• Experimental and Theoretical Evolutionary Ecology module, Freie Universität Berlin: I contribute to this MSc module by offering and supervising Individual Research Projects (IRPs) that the students are required to complete. IRPs are short projects (30 hours of research and report write-up).
• Development of teaching material for biological invasions (doi:10.1016/B978-0-12-819166-8.00034-7).
• IUCN EICAT Workshop, Extremadura, Spain : I was invited by the IUCN to run a two-day workshop with a colleague to teach 25 freshwater biologists from Spain and Portugal the methods required to apply EICAT to quantify and categorise the impacts of alien species. The workshop resulted in the completion of the first EICAT assessments for alien species on the Iberian Peninsula.
• Field Course Assistant, University College London: Assistance with the organisation and management of a two-day field course (BIOL2002: Field Course in Environmental Biology).

Past students :

Tom Allmert, BSc project, Freie Universität Berlin: A global assessment of the environmental and socio-economic impacts of alien lagomorph species (doi:10.1007/s13280-021-01642-7).

Laura Zinnert, MSc project, Freie Universität Berlin: The environmental and socio-economic impacts of alien crayfish.

Tim Lindken, MSc project, Freie Universität Berlin: The macroecology of missing terrestrial vertebrate species.

Current students :

Tom Allmert, MSc project / thesis, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Xing Chen, PhD, Freie Universität Berlin.

Google Scholar profile : https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=BUvpLB0AAAAJ&hl=en

Vimercati G, Probert AF… Evans T et al. (2022). The EICAT+ framework enables classification of positive impacts of alien taxa on native biodiversity. PLoS Biology, 20(8), e3001729. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001729.

Evans T, Jeschke JM, Liu C et al. 2021. Identifying the factors that increase the vulnerability of native birds to the impacts of alien birds. Ecography, 44, 727–739. doi:10.1111/ecog.05000.

Evans T. 2021. Quantifying the global threat to native birds from predation by non-native birds on small islands. Conservation Biology, 35, 1268–1277. doi:10.1111/cobi.13697.

IUCN. 2020a. IUCN EICAT Categories and Criteria. The Environmental Impact Classification for Alien Taxa (EICAT): First edition. Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK. Prepared by Bacher S, Blackburn TM… Evans T et al. doi:10.2305/IUCN.CH.2020.05.en.

Evans T, Blackburn TM. 2020. Global variation in the availability of data on the environmental impacts of alien birds. Biological Invasions, 22, 1027–1036. doi:10.1007/s10530-019-02153-z.

Evans T, Kumschick S, Şekercioğlu ÇH et al. 2018b. Identifying the factors that determine the severity and type of alien bird impacts. Diversity and Distributions, 24(6), 800–810. doi:10.1111/ddi.12721.

Evans T, Pigot A, Kumschick S et al. 2018a. Determinants of data deficiency in the impacts of alien bird species. Ecography, 41(8), 1401–1410. doi:10.1111/ecog.03232.

Evans T, Kumschick S, Blackburn TM. 2016. Application of the Environmental Impact Classification for Alien Taxa (EICAT) to a global assessment of alien bird impacts. Diversity and Distributions, 22(9), 919–931. doi:10.1111/ddi.12464.

Kumschick S, Gaertner M… Evans T et al. 2015. Ecological impacts of alien species: quantification, scope, caveats, and recommendations. BioScience, 65, 55–63. doi:10.1093/biosci/biu193.

Blackburn TM, Essl F, Evans T et al. 2014. A unified classification of alien species based on the magnitude of their environmental impacts. PLoS Biology, 12(5), e1001850. doi:10.1371/ journal.pbio.1001850.

Jeschke JM, Bacher S… Evans T et al. 2014. Defining the impact of non-native species. Conservation Biology, 28, 1188–1194. doi:10.1111/cobi.12299.