Alex has spent most of the last decade working on the conservation challenges facing the world’s most speciose avifauna; that hosted by the planet’s largest remaining expanse of tropical forest – the Amazon basin. Although he has broad interests in ecology and conservation biology he is especially passionate about Neotropical birds and understanding the patterns and processes underlying avian usage of human-modified tropical forest landscapes.

He is also involved in leading on several large-scale syntheses and meta-analyses addressing macro-ecological and phylogenetic work at large scales to understand the context and interplay of ecological and evolutionary factors. These include collaborations investigating vagrancy, colonization and speciation in island avifaunas and the biotic homogenization of tropical avifaunas.

Latterly he has undertaken postdoctoral work at the Goeldi Museum and at Cambridge University (UK) under the auspices of the Sustainable Amazon Network (of which he is a founder member).

Alex has also undertaken extensive consultancy work in the UK, USA and Brazil investigating the impacts of infrastructure improvements in regional biodiversity.