James Watling

Expertise: Conservation Biology, Environmental Science, Landscape Ecology 

Research Interest

I am the Coburn Professor of Environmental Science at John Carroll University in Cleveland, USA. I am always interested in hearing from undergraduates enrolled at JCU or students interested in coming to JCU for their masters degree. If you are a student who wants to join the lab, please send me an email describing your academic background, work experience, and research interests to jwatling@jcu.edu.

In our lab, we use observational, experimental, and geospatial modeling approaches to understand how drivers of global change such as landscape modification and climate change impact species and the landscapes in which they occur. My students and I do fieldwork in the United States and South America, working with a network of graduate students and undergraduate collaborators, technicians, and researchers from the federal government. 

Recent Courses

BL 1700, Principles of Biology III

BL 2220, General Ecology

BL 4170/5170, Introduction to Geographic Information Systems

BL 4190/5190, Conservation Biology

PH 1150, Environmental Earth Science

Recent Publications

• Nowakowski AJ, Watling JI, Murray A, Deichman JL, Akre TS, Muñoz Brenes CL, Todd BD, McRae L, Freeman R & Frishkoff LO (2023) Protected areas slow declines unevenly across the tetrapod tree of life. Nature 622:101-106.

• Ashford M, Watling JI & Hart K (2022) One shell of a problem: Cumulative threat analysis of male sea turtles indicates high anthropogenic threat for migratory individuals and Gulf of Mexico residents. Remote Sensing 14:3887.

• Arroyo-Rodríguez V, Fahrig L, Tabarelli M, Watling JI, Tischendorf L, Benchimol M, Cazetta E, Faria D, Leal I, Melo FPL, Morante-Filho JC, Santos BA, Arasa-Gisbert R, Arce-Peña N,Cervantes-López MJ, Cudney-Valenzuela S, Galán Acedo C, San-José M, Vieira ICG, Ferry Slick JW, Nowakowski AJ & Tscharntke T (2020) Designing optimal human-modified landscapes for forest biodiversity conservation. Ecology Letters 23:1404-4020.

• Watling JI, Arroyo-Rodríguez V, Pfeifer M, Banks-Leite C, Cisneros LM, Fang R, Lander B, Leal IR, Lens L, Possingham HP, Raheem DC, Ribeiro DB, Slade EM, Urbina-Cardona JN, Wood EM & Fahrig L (2020) Support for the habitat amount hypothesis from a global synthesis of species density studies. Ecology Letters 23:674-681.

• Betts MG, Wolf C, Pfeifer M, Banks-Leite C, Arroyo-Rodríguez V, Ribeiro DB, Barlow J, Eigenbrod F, Faria D, Fletcher RJ Jr, Hadley AS, Hawes JE, Holt RD, Klingbeil B, Kormann U, Lens L, Levi T, Medina-Rangel GF, Mezger D, Morante-Filho JC, Orme D, Peres CA, Phalan BT, Pidgeon A, Possingham H, Ripple WJ, Slade EM, Somarriba E, Tobias J, Tylianakis JM, Urbina-Cardona JN, Valente JJ, Watling JI, Wells K, Wearn OR, Wood E, Young R & Ewers RM (2019) Extinction filters mediate the global effects of fragmentation on animals. Science 366: 1236-1239.