Phil Bishop
Chief Scientist

Phil has been working on amphibian behavior and conservation for over 30 years. He has a MSc in Parasitology (University of Wales, UK) and a PhD in Behavioural Ecology (University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa). He is currently the Co-Chair of the IUCN SSC Amphibian Specialist Group. He has played an important role in producing distributional maps of amphibians (e.g. Atlas and Red Data Book of the Frogs of South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland), developing conservation action plans and raising public awareness about amphibian declines.

Phil is a professor at the University of Otago (Dunedin, New Zealand), where he runs a frog research group and teaches a wide range of subjects from cell biology to science communication. He works on the conservation and behavior of the very primitive New Zealand frogs of the genus Leiopelma (for more information see www.nzfrogs.org) and has extensive experience working with many different species of amphibians in different countries. His latest research focusses on amphibian breeding behavior, the chytrid fungus disease and translocating frogs to new habitats. He has published over 60 scientific papers which can be found on the University of Otago website.