Sergio Henriques

I am a conservation biologist who specialises in spiders. I chair the IUCN's Spider and Scorpions Specialist Group, that works to conserve arachnids as well as their habitats around the world.

The IUCN Red List is the most comprehensive indicator of extinction risks of the world’s biodiversity. However, Red List assessments are costly, time consuming and logistically complex. With current extinction rates, many species may even become extinct before we are able to assess them.

My research at the Institute of Zoology (ZSL) and the Centre for Biodiversity and Environment Research (UCL) aims to accelerate this process and my work with IUCN is to fulfil these gaps in understudied regions, like deserts, particularly in understudied species, like spiders. To establish general trends in the extinction risk over time.