Current activities

My research interests include species distribution modelling, community ecology, macroecology and the effects of natural and anthropogenic disturbance on biological communities, with a particular emphasis on coral reef fish communities. Using quantitative tools and statistical modelling, I explore the determism of species occurrence and abundance patterns at a global scale, the role of climate change and natural disturbance events and the influence of different management scenarios.

Background

• Postdoctoral fellowship (Ecological Modelling), Australian Institute of Marine Science, supervised by J. Caley (AIMS), M. Meekan (AIMS) & C. Bradshaw (University of Adelaide), ongoing.
• Postdoctoral fellowship (Ecological Modelling), Institut de Recherche pour le Développement of Nouméa, New Caledonia supervised by S. Andréfouët, two months.

Education

• PhD Thesis, University Pierre & Marie Curie (UPMC, Paris VI, France) and Ecole Pratique des hautes Etudes (EPHE), performed at Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) of Nouméa, New Caledonia, supervised by D. Ponton & R. Galzin. Obtained on 2007, Dec 11th with the Highest Grade.
• Master’s Thesis in Oceanology and Marine Environment, UPMC Paris VI. 2004.
• Engineering diploma in Food and Life Sciences, AgroParisTech, previously Institut National Agronomique de Paris-Grignon (INA P-G). 2004.

Publications

Over 20 science and technical papers in international journals. The following are a selection of recent publications.

• Mellin C, Parrott L, Andrefouet S, Bradshaw CJA, MacNeil MA, Caley MJ (2012) Multi-scale marine biodiversity patterns inferred efficiently from habitat image processing. Ecological Applications 22:792-803.
• Mellin C, Russell BD, Connell SC, Brook BW, Fordham DA (2012) Geographic range determinants of two commercially important marine molluscs. Diversity and Distributions 18: 133-146.
• Sequeira A, Mellin C, Rowat D, Meekan MG, Bradshaw CJA (2012) Ocean-scale prediction of whale shark distribution. Diversity and Distributions 18:504-518
• Watts MJ, Li Y, Russell BD, Mellin C, Connell SD, Fordham DA (2011) A novel method for mapping reefs and subtidal rocky habitats using artificial neural networks. Ecological Modelling 222:2606-2614.
• Mellin C, Delean S, Caley MJ, Edgar GJ, Meekan MG, Pitcher CR, Przeslawski R, Williams A, Bradshaw CJA (2011) Effectiveness of Biological Surrogates for Predicting Patterns of Marine Biodiversity : a Global Meta-Analysis. PLoS ONE 6(6): e20141.
• Mellin C, Huchery C, Caley MJ, Meekan MG, Bradshaw CJA (2010) Reef size and isolation determine the temporal stability of coral reef fish populations. Ecology 91:3138-3145.
• McArthur, M.A., Brooke, B.P., Przeslawski, R., Ryan, D.A., Lucieer, V.L., Nichol, S., McCallum, A.W., Mellin, C., Cresswell, I.D., Radke, L.C. (2010). On the use of abiotic surrogates to describe marine benthic biodiversity. Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science 88:21-32.
• Mellin C, Bradshaw CJA, Meekan MG, Caley MJ (2010) Environmental and spatial predictors of species richness and abundance in coral reef fishes. Global Ecology and Biogeography 19:212-222.
• Mellin C, Andréfouët S, Kulbicki M, Dalleau M, Vigliola L (2009) Remote sensing and fish-habitat relationships in coral reef ecosystems: review and pathways for systematic multi-scale hierarchical research. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 58:11-19.