Dr. Oliver L. Pescott

Oli is a plant ecologist who specialises in the design, management and analysis of volunteer-collected botanical datasets ("citizen science"). Within this area he has been instrumental in highlighting and addressing issues of bias, and has recently published the first ever "risk-of-bias" tool for descriptive inference in ecology ("ROBITT").

His botanical experience covers both the field- and desk-based ends of plant ecology; for example, he contributed to the recent Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland's (BSBI) Plant Atlas 2020 as a surveyor, analyst and editor. He is also the current Recording Secretary for the British Bryological Society, the referee for alien grasses for the BSBI, and the local bryophyte recorder for Oxfordshire. His other interests include invasive non-native species, the impacts of environmental change on biodiversity, and the communication and presentation of uncertainty in biodiversity trend analyses.