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Project Manager – National Wildlife TradeResearch UnitProject Seahorse DegreesB.Sc. Applied Biology, University of Leeds (1999) |
Contact Information
Email: j.mcperson@oceans.ubc.ca
Website: Project Seahorse
Social Media
Research Interests
Jana’s research is motivated by a desire to balance the needs of humans and the rest of nature. Her analyses seek to equip ecologists, wildlife managers, and policy-makers with improved tools to document, understand and mitigate human impacts on species while also empowering local communities to protect and benefit from the ecosystems they live in.
Biography
Prior to joining Project Seahorse in May 2024, Jana spent 14 years at Wilder Institute/Calgary Zoo coordinating community-based conservation projects in various parts of Africa that integrated nature conservation with sustainable development. During this time, her research focused on the benefits and efficacy of community-based conservation, threats and opportunities, and the contributions local and traditional ecological knowledge can make to protecting imperilled species. As a senior member of the zoo’s research team, she also contributed to analyses of marine conservation translocations, the use of green-list criteria in prioritising conservation investments, and the impact of climate change and plague on black-tailed prairie dogs, among other studies. Before that, as a postdoc at Dalhousie University, Jana worked on understanding human impacts on coral reef fish community composition in the Pacific, and on the application of satellite-based remote sensing in the marine environment. Her doctorate at Oxford also involved remote sensing to help map the distributions of bird species and their diversity across sub-Saharan Africa. Pre-doctorate, Jana conducted field work on seahorse ecology in Florida and South Africa, and on seahorse trade in Kenya and Tanzania.
Selected Publications
Narváez-Torres, P.R., Guthrie, N.K.,. Brichieri-Colombi, T.A., Razafindravelo, C., Jacobson, Z.S., Tera, F., Rafidimanana, D., Rahasivelo, Z.E., Petersen, M.A., Ramangason, H., Randall, L., McPherson, J.M., Frasier, C., Moehrenschlager, A., Holme, S.M., Louis, E.E., Johnson, S.E. (in press). Losing lemurs: declining populations and land cover changes over space and time. American Journal of Primatology. https://doi.org/ 10.1002/ajp.23615
Sosiak, C.E., Longair, R.W., Agba, T.I., Sheppard, D.J., McPherson, J.M., Glasier, J.R.N., Moehrenschlager, A. (2023). Regionally unique ant assemblages associated with community-based conservation in northwestern Ghana. Biotropica 00, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1111/btp.13288
Esmail, N., McPherson, J. M., Abulu, L., Amend, T., Amit, R., Bhatia, S., Bikaba, D., Brichieri-Colombi, T. A., Brown, J., Buschman, V., Fabinyi, M., Farhadinia, M., Ghayoumi, R, Hay-Edie, T., Horigue, V., Jungblut, V., Jupiter, S., Keane, A., Macdonald, D. W., Mahajan, S. L., McVey, A., Moehrenschlager, A., Nelson, F., Noshirwani, M., Ntiamoa-Baidu, Y., Postigo, J. L., Rakotondrazafy, V., Rao, M., Roe, D., Sierra-Huelsz, J. A., Stolton, S., Tawake, A., Wintle, B. (2023) What’s on the horizon for community-based conservation? Emerging threats and opportunities. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 8(7): 666-680. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2023.02.008
Lloyd, N.A., Keating, L.M., Friesen, A.J., Cole, D.M., McPherson, J.M., Akçakaya, H.R., Moehrenschlager A. (2023) Prioritizing species conservation programs based on IUCN Green Status and estimates of cost sharing potential. Conservation Biology 37:e14051. https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.14051
Sheppard D.J., Brichieri-Colombi T.A., Stark D.J., Lambrechts C., Moehrenschlager A., McPherson J.M. (2022) When Ecological analysis reveals hidden human dimensions: building on long-term community participation to enable a conservation translocation of Mountain Bongo in Kenya. Frontiers in Conservation Science 2: 10.3389/fcosc.2021.788267. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcosc.2021.788267
Thornhill, I., Cornelissen, J.H., McPherson, J.M., MacBride-Stewart, S., Mohamad, Z., White, J.H., Wiersma, Y.F. (2021) Towards ecological science for all by all. Journal of Applied Ecology 58: 206-213. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.13841
Liccioli, S. Stephens, T. Wilson, S.C., McPherson, J.M., Keating, L.M., Antonation, K.S., Bollinger, T.K., Corbett, C.R., Gummer, D.L., Lindsay, L.R., Galloway, T.D., Shury, T.K., Moehrenschlager, A. (2020) Enzootic maintenance of sylvatic plague in Canada’s threatened black-tailed prairie dog ecosystem. Ecosphere 11(5): e03138. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.3138
Brichieri-Colombi, T.A., Lloyd, N.A., McPherson, J.M., Moehrenschlager, A. (2019) Limited contributions of released animals from zoos to North American conservation translocations. Conservation Biology 33(1): 33-39. https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.13160
Brichieri-Colombi, T.A., McPherson, J.M., Sheppard, D.J., Mason, J.J., Moehrenschlager, A. (2018) Standardizing the evaluation of community-based conservation success. Ecological Applications 28(8): 1963-1981. https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.1788
Robinson, J.P.W, Williams, I.D., Yeager, L.A., McPherson, J.M., Clark, J., Oliver, T.A., Baum, J.K. (2018) Environmental conditions and herbivore biomass determine coral reef benthic community composition: implications for quantitative baselines. Coral Reefs 37(4): 1157-1168. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00338-018-01737-w
Stephens, T. Wilson, S.C., Cassidy, F., Bender, D., Gummer, D., Smith, D.H.V., Lloyd, N., McPherson, J.M., Moehrenschlager, A. (2018) Climate change impacts on the conservation outlook of populations on the poleward periphery of species ranges: a case study of Canadian black-tailed prairie dogs (Cynomys ludovicianus). Global Change Biology 24(2):836-847. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.13922
McPherson, J.M., Yeager, L.A., Baum, J.K. (2018) A simulation tool to scrutinise the behaviour of functional diversity metrics. Methods in Ecology and Evolution 9: 200-206. https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.12855
Yeager, L.A., Marchande, P., Gill, D.A., Baum, J.K., McPherson, J.M. (2017) Marine Socio-Environmental Covariates: queryable global layers of environmental and anthropogenic variables for marine ecosystem studies. Ecology 98(7): 1976. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.1884
Yeager, L.A., Deith, M.C.M., McPherson, J.M., Williams, I.D., Baum, J.K. (2017) Scale dependence of environmental controls on the functional diversity of coral reef fish communities. Global Ecology and Biogeography 26: 1177-1189. https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.12628
Robinson, J.P.W., Williams, I.D., Edwards, A.M., McPherson, J.M., Yeager, L.A., Vigliola, L., Brainard, R.E., Baum, J.K. (2017) Fishing degrades size structure of coral reef fish communities. Global Change Biology 23(3): 1009-1022. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.13482
Brichieri-Colombi, T.A., McPherson, J.M., Sheppard, D.J., Moehrenschlager, A. (2017) In aid of (re)discovering species: maximizing conservation insights from minimal data. Animal Conservation 20(2): 205-212. https://doi.org/10.1111/acv.12306
Mcpherson, J.M., Sammy, J., Sheppard, D.J., Mason, J.J., Brichieri-Colombi, T.A., Moehrenschlager, A. (2016) Integrating traditional knowledge when it appears to conflict with conservation: lessons from the discovery and protection of sitatunga in Ghana. Ecology and Society 21(1): 24. http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-08089-210124
Swan, K.D., McPherson, J.M., Seddon, P.J., Moehrenschlager, A. (2016) Managing Marine Biodiversity: The Rising Diversity and Prevalence of Marine Conservation Translocations. Conservation Letters 9(4): 239-251. https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12217
Kulbicki, M., Parravicini, V., Bellwood, D.R., Arias-Gonzalez, E., Chabanet, P., Floeter, S.R., Friedlander, A., McPherson, J.M., Myers, R.E., Vigliola, L., Mouillot, D. (2013) Global Biogeography of Reef Fishes: A Hierarchical Quantitative Delineation of Regions. PLoS ONE 8: e81847. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0081847
Jetz, W., McPherson, J.M., Gulranick, R.P. (2012) Integrating biodiversity distribution knowledge: toward a global map of life. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 27: 151-159. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2011.09.007
Nadon, M.O., Baum, J.K., Williams, I.D., McPherson, J.M., Zgliczynski, B.J., Richards, B.L., Schroeder, R.E., Brainard, R.E. (2012) Re-creating missing population baselines for Pacific reef sharks. Conservation Biology 26: 493-503. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2012.01835.x
Sheppard D.J., Moehrenschlager A., McPherson J.M., Mason, J.J. (2010) Ten years of adaptive community-governed conservation: economic and ecological success of a hippo reserve in West Africa. Environmental Conservation 37: 270-282. https://doi.org/10.1017/S037689291000041X
McPherson J.M., Myers, R.A. (2009) How to infer population trends in sparse data: examples with opportunistic sighting records for great white sharks. Diversity and Distributions 15: 880-890. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1472-4642.2009.00596.x
McPherson, J.M., Jetz, W. (2007) Type and spatial structure of distribution data and the perceived determinants of geographic gradients in ecology: the species richness of African birds. Global Ecology and Biogeography 16: 657-667. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1466-8238.2007.00318.x
McPherson, J.M., Jetz, W. (2007) Effects of species’ ecology on the accuracy of distribution models. Ecography 30:135-151. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0906-7590.2007.04823.x
Dormann C.F., McPherson J.M., Araújo M.B., Bivand R., Bolliger J., Carl G., Davies R.G., Hirzel A., Jetz W., Kissling W.D., Kühn I., Ohlemüller R., Peres-Neto P.R., Reineking B., Schröder B., Schurr F.M., Wilson, R. (2007) Methods to account for spatial autocorrelation in the analysis of species distributional data: a review. Ecography 30: 609-628. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2007.0906-7590.05171.x
McPherson J.M., Jetz W., Rogers, D.J. (2006) Using coarse-grained occurrence data to predict species distributions at finer spatial resolutions – possibilities and limitations. Ecological Modelling 192: 499-522. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2005.08.007
Baum J.K., McPherson J.M., Myers, R.A. (2005) Farming need not replace fishing if stocks are rebuilt. Nature 437: 26. https://doi.org/10.1038/437026d
McPherson J.M., Jetz W., Rogers, D.J. (2004) The effects of species’ range size on the accuracy of distribution models—ecological phenomenon or statistical artifact? Journal of Applied Ecology 41: 811-823. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0021-8901.2004.00943.x
McPherson J.M., Vincent, A.C.J. (2004) Assessing East African trade in seahorse species as a basis for conservation under international controls. Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems 14: 521-538. https://doi.org/10.1002/aqc.629
Bell E.M., Lockyear J.F., McPherson J.M., Marsden A.D., Vincent, A.C.J. (2003) First field studies of an endangered South African seahorse, Hippocampus capensis. Environmental Biology of Fishes 67: 35-46. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1024440717162