Cher Chow – REEFS

Dr Cher Chow

Lancaster University

Cher is a marine ecologist interested in how animals participate and are affected by ecosystem functioning and how functioning links with biodiversity. She is currently a Senior Research Associate working with James Robinson. Before joining LEC and the REEFS group, she completed her PhD at the University of St Andrews on biodiversity-productivity relationships on coral reefs. Cher has worked primarily on reef fish and coral assemblages in both tropical and subtropical Indo-Pacific reefs as part of her PhD and previous roles as a research assistant. In addition to coral reef ecology, she also collaborates on macroecological projects to understand patterns of global biodiversity change. Her current work with the Oceanic Subsidies project funded by the Royal Society focuses on understanding the oceanographic processes that drive pelagic energetic inputs to coral reef fish productivity. Cher is also a part of the Leadership Council for the BioTIME database project.

Research Interests

Cher is broadly interested in the energetics and functioning of coral reef ecosystems and how animals participate in those processes. She is currently focused on understanding energetic inputs to coral reef fish productivity, especially how the environmental forcings from pelagic areas surrounding coral reefs contribute to reef fish communities. She also has a fine arts background and enjoys combining imaging analyses with Bayesian modelling to tackle research questions that require estimating ecosystem functions.

Selected Publications

Chow CFY, Brambilla V, Fundakowski GJ, Madin JS, Marques TA, Schiettekatte NMD, Hoey AS, Dornelas M (2026) Random encounter modelling as a viable method to estimate absolute abundance of reef fish. Methods in Ecology and Evolution 17(2): 598–614.
Dornelas M, Antão LH, Bates AE, Brambilla V, Chase JM, Chow CFY, et al. (2025) BioTIME 2.0: Expanding and Improving a Database of Biodiversity Time Series. Global Ecology and Biogeography 34(5): e70003.
Chow CFY, Bolton C, Boutros N, Brambilla V, Fontoura L, Hoey AS, Madin JS, Pizarro O, Torres-Pulliza D, Woods RM, Zawada KJA, Barbosa M, Dornelas M (2023) Coral settlement and recruitment are negatively related to reef fish trait diversity. Coral Reefs 42(2): 519–533.
Chow CFY, Wassénius E, Dornelas M, Hoey AS (2021) Species differences drive spatial scaling of foraging patterns in herbivorous reef fishes. Oikos 130(12): 2217–2230.