About

Johannes Foufopoulos is a faculty member in the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan. His research broadly focuses on two main areas: the science behind the conservation of wildlife populations and natural ecosystems, and the ecology of infectious wildlife diseases. Specifically, he studies how habitat fragmentation, global climate change, and emerging pathogens impact global biodiversity and ecosystem function. His research group investigates the ecology of parasitism and disease in vertebrates by examining the ecological, physiological, and evolutionary aspects of host-parasite interactions. To achieve this, lab members employ an integrative approach utilizing methodologies from field ecology, comparative physiology, ecological immunology, evolutionary biology, and population genetics.

Research topics

• Biology
• Ecology
• Zoology
• Geography
• Paleontology
• Physical geography
• Oceanography
• Evolutionary biology
• Geology

Selected publications

• Data and code supporting "Plant diversity estimates of Mediterranean islands differ among biodiversity databases"

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2026-01-22

  datasetOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Dataset for "Long-term monitoring and remote sensing reveal waterbird colony collapses with rising lake-levels and multiple stressors"

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2026-03-28

  datasetOpen access

  This dataset includes the updated R code, data, and spatial datasets related to the manuscript "Long-term monitoring and remote sensing reveal waterbird colony collapses with rising lake-levels and multiple stressors". Black tern (Chlidonias niger) nesting location and success data were collected at the Lake St. Clair Flats region through Detroit Bird Alliance from 2013 to 2020. Water depth was collected using 3-m resolution bathymetry from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office for Coastal Management Lake Level Viewer Dataset and surface water levels from the NOAA Huron Erie Connecting Waterways Forecasting System (HECWFS) model. Geospatial habitat variables were collected from the National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP), commercial satellites (Kompsat-2, Triplesat-3, WorldView-2 and 3), and Planet Images (Rapideye-5 and PlanetScope). Data are in raster, shapefile, and csv formats. Analysis and dataset details are described in the associated manuscript.

  PublisherDOI

• A new morphologically cryptic species of forest frog (genus Platymantis) from New Britain Island, Bismarck Archipelago

  The Catalogue of Life · 2026-02-17

  datasetOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• A new morphologically cryptic species of forest frog (genus Platymantis) from New Britain Island, Bismarck Archipelago

  The Catalogue of Life · 2026-02-16

  datasetOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Dataset for "Long-term monitoring and remote sensing reveal waterbird colony collapses with rising lake-levels and multiple stressors"

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2026-03-28

  datasetOpen access

  This dataset includes the updated R code, data, and spatial datasets related to the manuscript "Long-term monitoring and remote sensing reveal waterbird colony collapses with rising lake-levels and multiple stressors". Black tern (Chlidonias niger) nesting location and success data were collected at the Lake St. Clair Flats region through Detroit Bird Alliance from 2013 to 2020. Water depth was collected using 3-m resolution bathymetry from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office for Coastal Management Lake Level Viewer Dataset and surface water levels from the NOAA Huron Erie Connecting Waterways Forecasting System (HECWFS) model. Geospatial habitat variables were collected from the National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP), commercial satellites (Kompsat-2, Triplesat-3, WorldView-2 and 3), and Planet Images (Rapideye-5 and PlanetScope). Data are in raster, shapefile, and csv formats. Analysis and dataset details are described in the associated manuscript.

  PublisherDOI

• Data and code supporting "Plant diversity estimates of Mediterranean islands differ among biodiversity databases"

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2026-01-22

  datasetOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Dark extinctions warrant recognition in Red Lists

  Nature Reviews Biodiversity · 2026-04-22

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Data and code supporting "Plant diversity estimates of Mediterranean islands differ among biodiversity databases"

  Open MIND · 2026-01-01

  dataset

• Plant diversity estimates of Mediterranean islands differ among biodiversity databases

  Ecography · 2026-02-26

  articleOpen access

  Large‐scale biodiversity databases encompass three main types of data for plants, namely single species point occurrences, co‐occurrences in vegetation plots, and checklists for specific areas. Evidence shows that such data types exhibit specific biases, reporting different species assemblages at local scales. We used the Mediterranean Basin, a global biodiversity hotspot with more than 2200 islands larger than 0.01 km 2 , to compare island vascular plant diversity patterns emerging from occurrence data (Global Biodiversity Information Facility; GBIF), vegetation plots (European Vegetation Archive; EVA), and species checklists (Global Inventory of Flora and Traits; GIFT). We aggregated plant data at the island level and compared geographic coverage, inventory completeness, and taxonomic coverage among these data sources. The combined databases accounted for 8702 species distributed on 790 islands (35.6% of the target islands). Data availability increased from small (26.8%) over medium (75.7%) to large islands (100.0%). Spatial coverage of databases on a 30 × 30 km grid was high for GBIF (52.8%) and EVA (45.4%), and low for GIFT (21.7%). GIFT provided higher native and alien species richness values for most of the islands, whereas GBIF and EVA consistently missed a considerable fraction of the expected species richness. Taking GIFT as reference, GBIF, and to a lesser extent EVA, showed a positive bias towards perennial species and an underrepresentation of annuals. Despite their lower taxonomic coverage, GBIF and EVA data can complement our knowledge on Mediterranean islands' plant diversity, providing data for islands lacking plant inventories. Moreover, GBIF and EVA's large datasets can be used for investigating other levels of ecological organisation and modelling single species (GBIF) or population (EVA) trends over space and time. Finally, our results advocate for a coordinated effort to fill the knowledge gaps through data collection and digitisation, possibly integrating data collected by experts by means of citizen science initiatives.

  PublisherDOI

• Dark extinctions in a rapidly changing world

  2026-03-10

  articleOpen access

  We are currently witnessing a mass extinction crisis due to increasingly overwhelming human impacts on the biosphere. Extinctions from the last few hundred years have been well-known for some taxonomic groups, but represent only the tip of the iceberg. While there is accumulating evidence that the number of historic human-induced extinctions is far higher than documented in the ‘gold standard’ for assessing extinction risks - the IUCN Red List - the extent and characteristics of poorly documented or ‘dark extinctions’ remain insufficiently known. Such dark extinctions, which are preceded by undocumented local declines and extinctions, have profound implications for assessing long-term trajectories of biodiversity change of local assemblages.Dark extinctions and undocumented local species declines span a gradient from events that left no direct trace, to documented losses supported by substantial evidence (e.g., subfossil remains, ancient DNA, historic descriptions, specimens in herbaria or museums, observation records) waiting to be formally accepted as actual local decline or extinction by rigorous scientific standards. Here, we synthesize the state of knowledge on the discrepancy between documented and dark extinctions, and assess the implications of undocumented local species losses on biodiversity assessments. We identify six essential dimensions for Red List assessments, and we provide an assessment of their coverage in the IUCN Red List. To this end we review the evidence on how extinction drivers have changed in importance over time, and how well they are actually covered by Red List assessments. We identify ten sources of gaps and biases in documenting extinctions and local species losses and evaluate the role of temporal lags in these processes. We discuss the implications of these findings for studying species richness and the temporal dynamics of local assemblages, and more broadly, for assessing the true scale of the unfolding extinction crisis and assess the implications for conservation policy. Finally, we identify key steps to better account for undocumented species declines from local to global scales.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Panayiotis Pafilis

  31 shared

• Hamish McCallum

  Griffith University

  21 shared

• Anthony Herrel

  University of Antwerp

  20 shared

• Colin M. Donihue

  Providence College

  18 shared

• Gary A. Wobeser

  17 shared

• Courtney C. Murdock

  University of Georgia

  13 shared

• Kinsey M. Brock

  San Diego State University

  13 shared

• Efstratios Valakos

  National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

  12 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Department of Zoology

  Univeristy of Wisconsin