Joe Atkinson

Joe Atkinson

School of Biological Sciences

Faculty of Sciences, Engineering and Technology

I was born in Tasmania and completed an undergraduate degree at the University of Tasmania, graduating with Honours under the expert and kind supervision of Jamie B. Kirkpatrick, where I developed a love of plants, biogeography, and curiosity-driven research. After a period working in the private sector as a consultant ecologist, I undertook a PhD at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, supervised by Prof. Stephen Bonser and Prof. Angela Moles. My PhD focused on understand the long-term effectiveness of ecological restoration across Australia and the world, and aimed to integrate classic ecological theories that could help us better understand therefore predict future restoration outcomes. I then moved to Aarhus, Denmark (who now have a Tasmanian queen), where I worked as a postdoc in the Danish National Research Foundation-funded Centre for Ecological Dynamics in a Novel Biosphere (ECONOVO) under the guidance of Jens-Christian Svenning and Robert Buitenwerf. I started as a Lecturer in Botany at the University of Adelaide in April 2025 and am beginning to build my lab with a focus on some of the themes explored below.

I am a plant community ecologist particularly interested in restoration, conservation, and functional traits. In particular, the work in my lab covers a few key themes: 

  • Improving terrestrial ecological restoration across the whole lifecycle from planning to evaluation 

Two researchers stand in looking at a grassland restoration experiment in Michigan, USA. Large tussocks of dying big blustem stand amongst a green field. The field is an old airstrip and still resembles this shape, surrounded by forest.

  • Using functional traits of plants and animals to better predict ecosystem response to global change 

A researcher stands in a field with a large firefighting rake disturbing soil in a quadrat that is part of a larger experimental grid. The landscape is flat and expansive with a large sky and only scattered grasses and small chenopod shrubs.

 

  • Semi-arid and arid zone responses to grazing of native and feral herbivores 

A dryland with scattered chenopod shrubs with a large billy goat standing in the foreground and Eucalyptus on the slopes behind. A clear blue sky and a very dry looking landscape.

 

I am available to supervise Honours projects and am broadly interested in projects covered in the above themes whether it is a macroecological, big data-driven approach or using detailed and intense fieldwork. I work with a number of large environmental NGOs with whom it may be possible to collaborate with for your project. I am also involved in the 100-year old vegetation exclosure experiment at Koonamore established by T. G. B. Osborne and am eager to support students to undertake projects at this site.

I have range of ongoing experiments, including a contributing site to the global network experiment DRAGNet (Disturbance and Resources Across Global grasslands), as well as TraitDivNet and BugNet.

  • Journals
    Year Citation
    2025 Gould, E., Fraser, H. S., Parker, T. H., Nakagawa, S., Griffith, S. C., Vesk, P. A., . . . Gilles, M. (2025). Same data, different analysts: variation in effect sizes due to analytical decisions in ecology and evolutionary biology. BMC Biology, 23(1), 36 pages.
    DOI Scopus1 Europe PMC4
    2025 Kerr, M. R., Ordonez, A., Riede, F., Atkinson, J., Pearce, E. A., Sykut, M., . . . Svenning, J. C. (2025). Widespread ecological novelty across the terrestrial biosphere. Nature Ecology and Evolution, 9(4), 589-598.
    DOI Scopus1
    2024 Atkinson, J., & Freudenberger, D. (2024). Young woodland restoration plantings can be resilient to uncontrolled bushfires. Ecological Management and Restoration, 25(3), 177-181.
    DOI
    2024 Andres, S. E., Atkinson, J., Coleman, D., Brazill-Boast, J., Wright, I. J., Allen, S., & Gallagher, R. V. (2024). Constraints of commercially available seed diversity in restoration: Implications for plant functional diversity. Plants People Planet, 6(6), 1341-1357.
    DOI Scopus2
    2024 Atkinson, J., Gallagher, R., Czyżewski, S., Kerr, M., Trepel, J., Buitenwerf, R., & Svenning, J. C. (2024). Integrating functional traits into trophic rewilding science. Journal of Ecology, 112(5), 936-953.
    DOI Scopus8
    2023 Earle, R. A. D., Atkinson, J., & Moles, A. T. (2023). British species that are present in Australia have different traits from British species that are not present in Australia. Diversity and Distributions, 29(10), 1289-1298.
    DOI
    2023 Atkinson, J., Groves, A. M., Towers, I. R., Catano, C. P., & Brudvig, L. A. (2023). Trait-mediated community assembly during experimental grassland restoration is altered by planting year rainfall. Journal of Applied Ecology, 60(8), 1587-1596.
    DOI Scopus5
    2023 Flores-Moreno, H., Dalrymple, R. L., Cornwell, W. K., Popovic, G., Nakagawa, S., Atkinson, J., . . . Moles, A. T. (2023). Is Australia weird? A cross-continental comparison of biological, geological and climatological features. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 11, 10 pages.
    DOI Scopus4
    2022 Atkinson, J., Simpson-Young, C., Fifield, G., Schneemann, B., Bonser, S. P., & Moles, A. T. (2022). Species and functional diversity of direct-seeded vegetation declines over 25 years. Ecological Management and Restoration, 23(3), 252-260.
    DOI Scopus5
    2022 Atkinson, J., Brudvig, L. A., Mallen-Cooper, M., Nakagawa, S., Moles, A. T., & Bonser, S. P. (2022). Terrestrial ecosystem restoration increases biodiversity and reduces its variability, but not to reference levels: A global meta-analysis. Ecology Letters, 25(7), 1725-1737.
    DOI Scopus68 Europe PMC14
    2022 Atkinson, J., Freudenberger, D., Dwyer, J. M., Standish, R. J., Moles, A. T., & Bonser, S. P. (2022). Plant size and neighbourhood characteristics influence survival and growth in a restored ex-agricultural ecosystem. Ecological Solutions and Evidence, 3(1), 12 pages.
    DOI Scopus3
    2022 Mallen-Cooper, M., Atkinson, J., Xirocostas, Z. A., Wijas, B., Chiarenza, G. M., Dadzie, F. A., & Eldridge, D. J. (2022). Global synthesis reveals strong multifaceted effects of eucalypts on soils. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 31(8), 1667-1678.
    DOI Scopus10
    2021 Wijas, B., & Atkinson, J. (2021). Termites in restoration: the forgotten insect?. Restoration Ecology, 29(8), 5 pages.
    DOI Scopus5
    2021 Falster, D., Gallagher, R., Wenk, E. H., Wright, I. J., Indiarto, D., Andrew, S. C., . . . Ziemińska, K. (2021). AusTraits, a curated plant trait database for the Australian flora. Scientific data, 8(1), 254-1-254-20.
    DOI Scopus118 WoS45 Europe PMC29
    2020 Atkinson, J., & Kirkpatrick, J. B. (2020). A short distance to the last glacial coast best explains a Tasmanian centre of endemism. Frontiers of Biogeography, 12(4), 1-11.
    DOI
    2020 Atkinson, J., & Bonser, S. P. (2020). “Active” and “passive” ecological restoration strategies in meta-analysis. Restoration Ecology, 28(5), 1032-1035.
    DOI Scopus59
    2019 Harrison-Day, V., Atkinson, J., & Kirkpatrick, J. B. (2019). The origin and persistence of alpine vernal ponds in mineral soils. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, 44(11), 2202-2210.
    DOI Scopus3

  • Preprint
    Year Citation
    2023 Andres, S., Atkinson, J., Coleman, D., Boast, J. B., Allen, S., Wright, I., & Gallagher, R. (2023). Constraints of commercially available seed diversity in restoration: implications for plant functional diversity.
    DOI
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