Welcome Kim McConkey – New SE
Submitted by editor on 4 December 2024.
We are happy to welcome Dr. Kim McConkey from New Zealand, now working independently and based in India, to the Oikos Editorial Board. To know more about her, read our interview below!
Website: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kim-Mcconkey
What's your main research focus at the moment?
I am fascinated by mammals (of all shapes and sizes) and am particularly interested in understanding the roles they play in maintaining ecosystems. My research focus for many years has been seed dispersal and seed predation., with a focus on mammals. At the moment I am interested in megafauna (elephants, rhinos and bovids) and porcupines, but my focus on particular taxa changes as I understand one group and see gaps in our knowledge on others. Ultimately, my focus is to understand plant-mammal interactions at community levels and across ecosystems that vary in relative abundances of different taxa.
Can you describe your research career?
Originally from New Zealand, I became interested in tropical Asian forests after a visit just before I began my undergraduate degree. After graduating in NZ, I returned to Indonesia to collect data, on gibbons and seed dispersal, for my PhD at the University of Cambridge. After a postdoc, based in Tonga to determine how bat abundance affected their seed dispersal role, I returned to tropical Asia. I have now been here for more than 20 years, studying interactions in Thailand, Malaysia, India and Indonesia. Due to family commitments, I have been working independently during that time, but help students whenever I can. I am based in Hyderabad, India.
How come that you became a scientist in ecology?
The ecological interactions that maintain ecosystems intrigue me – so much more than individual taxa or systems. Luckily (and thanks to the advice of my fellow students) I decided to study seed dispersal for my PhD, and I soon realized that I was far more interested in the outcomes of the plant-gibbon interactions I was observing than in the gibbons themselves!
What do you do when you're not working?
Even though my two sons have recently left home, they still keep me quite busy. In the photo with the baby elephant I am discussing my son’s homework, after a day in the forest. At home we have four dogs which keep us busy, and two horses, which occupy our weekends.
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