Research

My research programme centres on demography, life-history evolution, phenology, and quantitative methods, with emphasis on robust inference and open, reusable scientific infrastructure.

Demography and life history evolution

I study how survival, development, and reproduction combine to shape population trajectories within and across taxa, drawing on long-term field datasets and large comparative resources such as COMPADRE and COMADRE. A central aim is to understand how variation in vital rates drives the evolution of life-history strategies across the tree of life. This includes work on the fast-slow continuum of life histories, the axis along which species range from short-lived and fast-reproducing to long-lived and slow-reproducing, and how position on this continuum predicts population responses to environmental change, including weather variability and climate shifts.

Ageing across the tree of life

I work on comparative questions about senescence and longevity: why ageing trajectories differ so markedly across species, and what this reveals about life-history evolution. Work published in Nature (2014) documented striking diversity in ageing patterns across 46 species, including cases of negligible and even negative senescence, challenging the long-held assumption that biological ageing is universal and inevitable. Subsequent work has examined longevity in human and non-human populations, the energetic basis of ageing, and the pace and shape of senescence across angiosperms and animals.

Phenology and climate change

A substantial strand of my research examines the timing of life-cycle events, reproduction, migration, flowering, and emergence, and how phenological responses to environmental change affect population dynamics and species interactions. This work spans plants and animals, combines long-term observational datasets with large open resources, and addresses both the proximate drivers of phenological timing and its downstream demographic consequences. Current funded work (DFF; Novo Nordisk Foundation) focuses on individual variation in woodland phenology and global patterns of phenological shift under climate change.

Open data infrastructure

I co-lead the COMPADRE Plant and COMADRE Animal Matrix Database projects, open, curated repositories of matrix population models for hundreds of plant and animal species worldwide, used by researchers across the globe and underpinning a growing body of comparative demographic research. I have contributed to this effort since 2010 and have developed associated R packages, Rcompadre, Rage, and mpmsim, that make demographic data accessible and reproducible. This infrastructure work reflects a commitment to cumulative, open science and to lowering barriers to entry for researchers without access to large independent datasets.

Quantitative methods

I contribute to the development and dissemination of methods for demographic and life-history analysis, with particular attention to reproducible workflows in R. This includes Bayesian approaches to survival analysis, simulation frameworks for matrix population models, and methods for integrating demographic, phylogenetic, and phenological data at scale. A recurring theme is making methodologically rigorous approaches accessible, through software, open course materials, and published protocols, so that best-practice methods reach a broader research community.

Current project areas

Current funded projects include a DFF-supported study of drivers of individual variation in woodland phenology under climate change, and a Novo Nordisk Foundation sabbatical project using large open datasets to quantify global phenological shifts. Ongoing collaborative work addresses the diversity of ageing across taxa, links between social organisation and lifespan in mammals, and continued development of the COMPADRE and COMADRE databases.

Research funding

  • Danish Independent Research Fund (DFF): individual variation in woodland phenology under climate change (active)
  • Novo Nordisk Foundation: sabbatical project on global phenological shifts from large open datasets (active)

Prizes and recognition

Publications

Selected publications:

  • Jones et al. (2014). Diversity of ageing across the tree of life. Nature, 505, 169-173. DOI
    Demonstrated that ageing is not biologically inevitable, documenting strikingly diverse senescence trajectories, including negligible and negative ageing, across 46 species spanning the tree of life.
  • Colchero et al. (2016). The emergence of longevous populations. PNAS, 113, E7681-E7690. DOI
    PNAS Cozzarelli Prize 2016. Showed that the compression of mortality in human populations, the basis of modern longevity, has deep parallels in other long-lived species, linking human demography to broader evolutionary biology.
  • Salguero-Gomez et al. (2016). COMADRE: a global database of animal demography. Journal of Animal Ecology, 85, 371-384. DOI
    BES Elton Prize 2016. Introduced the COMADRE database, now a foundational resource for comparative animal demography used by researchers worldwide.
  • Salguero-Gomez et al. (2015). The COMPADRE Plant Matrix Database. Journal of Ecology, 103, 202-218. DOI
    Established COMPADRE as the primary open repository for plant demographic data, enabling a new era of cross-species comparative plant demography.
  • Salguero-Gomez et al. (2016). Fast-slow continuum and reproductive strategies structure plant life-history variation worldwide. PNAS, 113, 230-235. DOI
    Revealed that plant life-history diversity is organised along two orthogonal axes, the fast-slow continuum and a reproductive strategy axis, providing a unifying framework for comparative plant demography.
  • Healy et al. (2019). Animal life history is shaped by the pace of life and the distribution of age-specific mortality and reproduction. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 3, 1217-1224. DOI
    Showed that the pace-of-life framework alone is insufficient to explain life-history diversity, identifying age-specific mortality patterns as a key additional axis structuring animal life histories.
  • Stott et al. (2024). Life histories not just fast or slow. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 39, 830-840. DOI
    A synthesis challenging the sufficiency of the fast-slow continuum and arguing for a more multidimensional understanding of life-history structure across taxa.
  • Jones et al. (2022). Rcompadre and Rage: two R packages to facilitate the use of the COMPADRE and COMADRE databases. Methods in Ecology & Evolution, 13, 770-781. DOI
    Described R infrastructure underpinning open demographic analysis, making COMPADRE and COMADRE accessible through reproducible, documented workflows.
  • Jones (2025). mpmsim: an R package for simulating matrix population models. Methods in Ecology & Evolution, 16, 904-911. DOI
    Introduced a flexible simulation framework for matrix population models, supporting teaching, sensitivity analysis, and methods development in demographic research.
  • Jackson et al. (2022). Life-history predicts global population responses to the weather in terrestrial mammals. eLife, 11. DOI
    Demonstrated that life-history position on the fast-slow continuum predicts how strongly mammal populations respond to weather variation, linking evolutionary theory to applied conservation demography.
  • Gascoigne et al. (2023). A standard protocol to report discrete stage-structured demographic information. Methods in Ecology & Evolution, 14, 2065-2083. DOI
    Established community-wide reporting standards for demographic data, improving reproducibility and comparability across the demographic literature.
  • Phillimore et al. (2010). Differences in spawning date between populations of common frog reveal local adaptation. PNAS, 107, 8292-8297. DOI
    Provided evidence of local adaptation in phenological timing, helping establish an empirical foundation for later work on phenology and environmental change.

For a full and up-to-date list, see Google Scholar.