Postdoctoral researcher at Justus Liebig University Giessen & Ph.D. from University College London (CBER / ZSL / RSPB). Creator of the b3gbi R package for GBIF biodiversity data cubes.
Fiction and essays that engage both the intellect and the heart. Explore the suspense thriller Entering Darkness, short stories, and thought-provoking articles on science, faith, and human empathy.
Developing robust quantitative indicators and open-source software tools to track global biodiversity change—from deep-sea mesopelagic fish communities to continental occurrence data cubes and the Living Planet Index.
Notice how the three silhouettes in the landing page artwork reflect the three scales of my scientific research.
Transforming raw citizen-science and museum occurrence records from GBIF into standardized gridded data cubes to measure species richness, taxonomic distinctness, rarity, and Hill diversity across space and time.
Investigating how data deficiency, patchy geographic sampling, and taxonomic bias affect headline policy metrics like the Living Planet Index (LPI), and designing sampled & diversity-weighted approaches.
Studying latitudinal transitions, spatial distribution, and larval fish assemblages of mesopelagic fishes across the eastern central Atlantic, linking oceanographic drivers to marine community structure.
Figures from my published, open-access papers and from the b3gbi R package. Click a figure to open it at full size.
Have you ever read a page-turner, engaged with the characters, and then put it down and forgot about it? I write fiction and essays for readers who love exciting stories you can't put down—but want to be left with burning questions about life, the universe, and everything long after turning the final page.
What would happen if someone discovered scientific evidence of a higher being?
I'm Shawn Dove, author of Entering Darkness. I like to read novels that engage me both intellectually and emotionally—novels that have something to say about the world and leave me feeling like my mind has new ideas on which to ruminate.
Literary fiction often offers beautiful prose and intellectual stimulation, yet the stories can feel distant, disjointed, or slow. You have to read between the lines to find the meaning.
Popular fiction is exciting, tense, and emotional with likable characters and gripping plots—but how often does it leave you pondering life, faith, science, and human nature?
I'm sure many of you are just like me: you love to think deeply, but still prefer to read exciting books that you can't put down. I wrote Entering Darkness for people like us.
