Catherine Sheard

3.6k total citations · 2 hit papers
40 papers, 1.5k citations indexed

About

Catherine Sheard is a scholar working on Ecology, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics and Nature and Landscape Conservation. According to data from OpenAlex, Catherine Sheard has authored 40 papers receiving a total of 1.5k indexed citations (citations by other indexed papers that have themselves been cited), including 23 papers in Ecology, 21 papers in Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics and 14 papers in Nature and Landscape Conservation. Recurrent topics in Catherine Sheard's work include Avian ecology and behavior (15 papers), Animal Behavior and Reproduction (14 papers) and Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies (12 papers). Catherine Sheard is often cited by papers focused on Avian ecology and behavior (15 papers), Animal Behavior and Reproduction (14 papers) and Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies (12 papers). Catherine Sheard collaborates with scholars based in United Kingdom, United States and Canada. Catherine Sheard's co-authors include Joseph A. Tobias, Tom P. Bregman, Nathalie Seddon, Alex L. Pigot, Brian C. Weeks, Santiago Claramunt, Eliot T. Miller, Benjamin G. Freeman, Uri Roll and Christopher H. Trisos and has published in prestigious journals such as Science, Nature Communications and Current Biology.

In The Last Decade

Catherine Sheard

39 papers receiving 1.4k citations

Hit Papers

align trajectories

What are hit papers?

Hit papers significantly outperform the citation benchmark for their cohort. A paper qualifies if it has ≥500 total citations, achieves ≥1.5× the top-1% citation threshold for papers in the same subfield and year (this is the minimum needed to enter the top 1%, not the average within it), or reaches the top citation threshold in at least one of its specific research topics.

Macroevolutionary convergence connects morphological form to ecological function in birds

2020 333 citations Alex L. Pigot, Catherine Sheard et al. Nature Ecology & Evolution profile →
Ecological drivers of global gradients in avian dispersal inferred from wing morphology

2020 254 citations Catherine Sheard, Montague H. C. Neate‐Clegg et al. Nature Communications profile →

Peers — A (Enhanced Table)

Peers by citation overlap · career bar shows stage (early→late) cites · hero ref

Name	h						Papers	Cites
Catherine Sheard United Kingdom	16	784	563	530	376	222	40	1.5k
Yoel E. Stuart United States	16	445 0.6×	476 0.8×	343 0.6×	230 0.6×	104 0.5×	42	1.3k
Sally E. Street United Kingdom	15	357 0.5×	352 0.6×	137 0.3×	127 0.3×	99 0.4×	28	1.1k
Amy E. Dunham United States	24	763 1.0×	833 1.5×	513 1.0×	255 0.7×	73 0.3×	52	1.7k
Hannah M. Lewis United States	8	282 0.4×	405 0.7×	281 0.5×	88 0.2×	56 0.3×	18	1.1k
Luis Carlos Contreras González Spain	19	764 1.0×	382 0.7×	390 0.7×	84 0.2×	182 0.8×	100	1.5k
Louise Kuchel Australia	15	655 0.8×	192 0.3×	471 0.9×	78 0.2×	17 0.1×	24	1.2k
Andrea Gazzola Italy	19	660 0.8×	224 0.4×	123 0.2×	80 0.2×	46 0.2×	59	1.0k
Simon Ducatez Canada	25	1.2k 1.5×	1.1k 2.0×	379 0.7×	353 0.9×	56 0.3×	59	2.2k
Ian G. McLean New Zealand	22	1.1k 1.4×	803 1.4×	251 0.5×	82 0.2×	26 0.1×	74	1.7k
Daniel Otte United States	22	530 0.7×	2.3k 4.2×	762 1.4×	210 0.6×	426 1.9×	82	3.3k

Countries citing papers authored by Catherine Sheard

Since Specialization

Citations

This map shows the geographic impact of Catherine Sheard's research. It shows the number of citations coming from papers published by authors working in each country. You can also color the map by specialization and compare the number of citations received by Catherine Sheard with the expected number of citations based on a country's size and research output (numbers larger than one mean the country cites Catherine Sheard more than expected).

Fields of papers citing papers by Catherine Sheard

Since Specialization

Physical SciencesHealth SciencesLife SciencesSocial Sciences

This network shows the impact of papers produced by Catherine Sheard. Nodes represent research fields, and links connect fields that are likely to share authors. Colored nodes show fields that tend to cite the papers produced by Catherine Sheard. The network helps show where Catherine Sheard may publish in the future.

Co-authorship network of co-authors of Catherine Sheard

This figure shows the co-authorship network connecting the top 25 collaborators of Catherine Sheard. A scholar is included among the top collaborators of Catherine Sheard based on the total number of citations received by their joint publications. Widths of edges represent the number of papers authors have co-authored together. Node borders signify the number of papers an author published with Catherine Sheard. Catherine Sheard is excluded from the visualization to improve readability, since they are connected to all nodes in the network.

All Works

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20 of 20 papers shown

Sheard, Catherine, et al.. (2026). AVONICHE : A Global Dataset of Dietary and Foraging Niches for Birds. Global Ecology and Biogeography. 35(1).

Odom, Karan J., Marcelo Araya‐Salas, Lauryn Benedict, et al.. (2025). Global incidence of female birdsong is predicted by territoriality and biparental care in songbirds. Nature Communications. 16(1). 6157–6157. 1 indexed citations

Claramunt, Santiago, Catherine Sheard, Joseph W. Brown, et al.. (2025). A new time tree of birds reveals the interplay between dispersal, geographic range size, and diversification. Current Biology. 35(16). 3883–3895.e4. 2 indexed citations

Drury, Jonathan P., Julien Clavel, Joseph A. Tobias, et al.. (2024). Limited ecological opportunity influences the tempo of morphological evolution in birds. Current Biology. 34(3). 661–669.e4. 4 indexed citations

Sheard, Catherine, et al.. (2024). Anthropogenic nest material use in a global sample of birds. Journal of Animal Ecology. 93(6). 691–704. 3 indexed citations

Street, Sally E., et al.. (2023). The evolution of enclosed nesting in passerines is shaped by competition, energetic costs, and predation threat. The Auk. 141(1). 4 indexed citations

Sheard, Catherine, et al.. (2023). Beak shape and nest material use in birds. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences. 378(1884). 20220147–20220147. 15 indexed citations

Triantis, Kostas A., François Rigal, Robert J. Whittaker, et al.. (2022). Deterministic assembly and anthropogenic extinctions drive convergence of island bird communities. Global Ecology and Biogeography. 31(9). 1741–1755. 13 indexed citations

Weeks, Brian C., et al.. (2022). Morphological adaptations linked to flight efficiency and aerial lifestyle determine natal dispersal distance in birds. Functional Ecology. 36(7). 1681–1689. 36 indexed citations

10.

Drury, Jonathan P., Julien Clavel, Joseph A. Tobias, et al.. (2021). Tempo and mode of morphological evolution are decoupled from latitude in birds. PLoS Biology. 19(8). e3001270–e3001270. 7 indexed citations

11.

Sheard, Catherine, Montague H. C. Neate‐Clegg, Nico Alioravainen, et al.. (2020). Ecological drivers of global gradients in avian dispersal inferred from wing morphology. Nature Communications. 11(1). 2463–2463. 254 indexed citations breakdown →

12.

Sheard, Catherine, Claire Bowern, Rikker Dockum, & Fiona M. Jordan. (2020). Pama–Nyungan grandparent systems change with grandchildren, but not cross-cousin terms or social norms. Evolutionary Human Sciences. 2. 1 indexed citations

13.

Pigot, Alex L., Catherine Sheard, Eliot T. Miller, et al.. (2020). Macroevolutionary convergence connects morphological form to ecological function in birds. Nature Ecology & Evolution. 4(2). 230–239. 333 indexed citations breakdown →

14.

Rácz, Péter, Sam Passmore, Catherine Sheard, & Fiona M. Jordan. (2019). Usage frequency and lexical class determine the evolution of kinship terms in Indo-European. Royal Society Open Science. 6(10). 191385–191385. 6 indexed citations

15.

Howard, Christine, Philip A. Stephens, Joseph A. Tobias, et al.. (2018). Flight range, fuel load and the impact of climate change on the journeys of migrant birds. Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences. 285(1873). 20172329–20172329. 51 indexed citations

16.

Pigot, Alex L., Walter Jetz, Catherine Sheard, & Joseph A. Tobias. (2018). The macroecological dynamics of species coexistence in birds. Nature Ecology & Evolution. 2(7). 1112–1119. 42 indexed citations

17.

Bregman, Tom P., et al.. (2016). Supplementary material from "Quantifying species contributions to ecosystem processes: a global assessment of functional trait and phylogenetic metrics across avian seed-dispersal networks". Figshare. 1 indexed citations

18.

Tobias, Joseph A., et al.. (2016). Territoriality, Social Bonds, and the Evolution of Communal Signaling in Birds. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. 4. 126 indexed citations

19.

Matthews, Thomas J., Catherine Sheard, H. Eden W. Cottee‐Jones, et al.. (2015). Ecological traits reveal functional nestedness of bird communities in habitat islands: a global survey. Oikos. 124(7). 817–826. 35 indexed citations

20.

Bowern, Claire, Hannah J. Haynie, Catherine Sheard, et al.. (2014). Loan and Inheritance Patterns in Hunter-Gatherer Ethnobiological Systems. Journal of Ethnobiology. 34(2). 195–227. 8 indexed citations

Rankless uses publication and citation data sourced from OpenAlex, an open and comprehensive bibliographic database. While OpenAlex provides broad and valuable coverage of the global research landscape, it—like all bibliographic datasets—has inherent limitations. These include incomplete records, variations in author disambiguation, differences in journal indexing, and delays in data updates. As a result, some metrics and network relationships displayed in Rankless may not fully capture the entirety of a scholar's output or impact.

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