Lesley Lancaster

Lesley Lancaster is a Professor and Personal Chair at the University of Aberdeen's School of Biological Sciences. She holds a PhD from the University of California Santa Cruz (2008), with a dissertation on maternal effects in lizards. Postdoctoral work at NCEAS (2009-2012) and Lund University (2012-2013) focused on macroevolutionary and ecological processes. Her research explores climate change impacts on evolution, particularly geographic range limits and biogeography, using damselflies and seed beetles as study systems.

She supervises PhD students in Biological and Environmental Sciences, emphasizing climate adaptation and evolutionary processes. Roles include Senior Editor for the Journal of Animal Ecology and membership in the British Ecological Society and European Society for Evolutionary Biology. Her work integrates experimental evolution, synthesis of global data, and ecological modeling to address biodiversity and range shifts.

Recent publications highlight climate-driven range expansions, thermal limits of insects, and niche evolution. She collaborates on projects like BioTIME (biodiversity time series) and develops methods for ecological monitoring (e.g., GAM4water for water temperature mapping). Her research bridges ecology, evolution, and conservation, with a focus on understanding and predicting species responses to global change.