Rate My Professor Chevonne Reynolds

Chevonne Reynolds is an Associate Professor in the School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand. She holds a BSc, BScHons and MSc from the University of the Witwatersrand and a PhD from the University of Cape Town. Prior to her current position, Reynolds completed her PhD at the FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology under the supervision of Professor Graeme Cumming and undertook a postdoctoral fellowship with Professor Claire Spottiswoode. She also coordinates and teaches on the landscape ecology module of the Conservation Biology MSc course at the FitzPatrick Institute.

Reynolds’s research focuses on using birds to understand the effects of landscape composition and configuration on biological communities. Her work examines trade-offs between agricultural production and biodiversity conservation, drawing on citizen science data such as the Southern African Bird Atlas Project as well as field-based studies. She has extended this research to urban systems, exploring mechanisms that influence urban biodiversity and associated ecosystem services. Key publications include a 2017 paper in Landscape Ecology on inconsistent effects of landscape heterogeneity on animal diversity in agricultural mosaics and a 2018 paper in Biodiversity and Conservation on landscape heterogeneity and bird diversity. Reynolds contributes to teaching and research in ornithology, landscape ecology and urban ecology at the University of the Witwatersrand.