Our people
Dr Drew Allen | Our research uses mathematical models to describe a range of biological phenomena, including broadscale biodiversity gradients, rates of DNA evolution and nutrient cycles in organisms and ecosystems. Our work entails developing and testing a new class of biodiversity models that relate contemporary biodiversity to speciation-extinction dynamics in the fossil record and ecologically induced changes in population abundance through time. This work aims to provide a better understanding of how environmental changes, including those induced by human activities, influence the numbers of species present in ecosystems. |
A/Prof John Alroy | Quantifying biodiversity and extinction has been the main theme of our research. It focuses largely on methodological issues and global richness patterns, both in the deep fossil record and in the present. Our methods can be used to generate numerical timescales, compute extinction rates, find the chance that a single species is extinct, quantify the similarity between communities and estimate species richness. Our lab is also interested in the evolution of body mass, Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions and captive breeding programs. |
Prof Brian Atwell | I have broad interests in plant functional biology, drawing together the traditional disciplines of plant physiology, proteomics and genomics. The core theme is plant stress biology, specifically how plants survive in physically adverse conditions such as flooding, drought, heat and salt stress. Our experiments are designed around commercially important (e.g. eucalypts, cereals, cotton, solanaceous species) and the many wild relatives of these plants that evolved in much harsher conditions such as the Australian savannah. Using this approach and are international collaborations, we have successfully targeted stress-tolerance genes and learned how they confer this tolerance and how they might be exploited for commercial purposes, particularly as a means of enhancing resilience in the world’s agricultural systems. |
A/Prof Melanie Bishop | Our research investigates how the coastal zone might be sustainably developed to protect estuarine and nearshore biodiversity and its important socioeconomic values. We focus on temperate coastal ecosystems, which are one of the most important ecosystems for marine productivity and nutrient cycling, yet they have borne the brunt of human impacts. We use field experiments to address questions at ecologically meaningful scales, spanning coastlines and years. |
Prof Grant Hose | We aim to undertake groundbreaking research on the ecology of groundwater and surface freshwater environments and on the impacts of pollution and environmental change on them. Our goal is to better understand and protect these ecosystems through the development of robust and protective environmental quality criteria and guidelines. |
Prof Michelle Leishman | We do fundamental plant ecological research, focusing on the response of plants to climate change, on how exotic plants can become invasive in novel environments, on invasive plant pathogens and on the development of rehabilitation and restoration strategies for native vegetation. We use a range of different approaches, including field and glasshouse studies, bioclimatic modelling, functional trait comparisons, genetic analyses, and meta-analyses. Most recently, the lab has focused on urban greening, including species selection for urban spaces in a changing climate. |
Emeritus Prof Mark Westoby | Research on the spread of ecological strategies, compared worldwide via measurable traits (what has come to be known as “trait ecology”). For land plants, current activities include models for coexistence of trait strategies, when trait-pairs become coordinated and when they do not, controls on geographical boundaries, and the importance of wood in nutrient budgets. (With Daniel Falster and others.) For bacteria and archaea, research is currently focused on cell size, genome size and potential rate of increase. Continuing interests also in state-and-transition models for vegetation, and in the logic of phylogenetically-informed trait analysis. |
Prof Hendrik Poorter | Our main focus is currently in achieving a quantitative understanding of how plants respond to their a-biotic environment. To this end we carry out meta-analyses for a wide range of anatomical, morphological, physiological and chemical plant traits in leaves, stems and roots, as well as for whole plant growth, allocation and reproduction. Using experiments in which the light level, light quality, UV-B, CO2, O3, nutrients, water, temperature, salinity or soil compaction were experimentally manipulated, we derive dose-response curves which quantitatively summarise how plants in general acclimate in the longer term and at different scales to these different factors. |
A/Prof Michelle Power | Our group investigates the ecology and evolution of host-parasite interactions and dissemination of human-derived pathogens to wildlife within a one health framework; which recognises that the pathogen cycle involves the movement of potential disease-causing organisms between humans, domesticated animals and wildlife. We are studying the pathogen cycling in threatened systems, such as in Antarctica, and in endangered wildlife species. |
A/Prof Jane Williamson | Research undertaken by the Marine Ecology Group centres around the theme of human impacts (eg climate change, commercial fishing, microplastics) on marine ecological resistance and sustainability. We have a particular focus on species that are likely to be under threat and those that have the capacity to impart substantial community changes. In the past few years we have worked on a diverse array of species including sharks, rays, teleosts, echinoderms and polychaetes. We research our questions using molecular, laboratory and field-based techniques and incorporate the fields of animal behaviour, aquaculture, conservation biology, ecology and fisheries assessment. |
Prof Ian Wright | In much of our work, we investigate the functional ecology and ecological strategies of plants – the ‘how and why’ of differences among species in their structural, chemical and physiological traits – and the implications of this variation for larger-scale processes. For this, we use a variety of approaches, ranging from fine-scale anatomical or physiological studies to global-scale analyses of trait variation. We run fieldwork in a variety of systems, from the wet tropics to temperate woodlands to the arid zone. |