Zoology & Ecology
Saul Chemonges
- Adjunct Associate Professor
- saul.chemonges@jcu.edu.au
Daniel Montesinos Torres
- Senior Research Fellow
- daniel.montesinos@jcu.edu.au
Claire Gely
- Lecturer, Zoology and Ecology
- claire.gely@jcu.edu.au
Ben Hirsch
- Adjunct Senior Lecturer
- ben.hirsch@jcu.edu.au
Stephen Williams
- Adjunct Professor
- stephen.williams@jcu.edu.au
Myles Menz
- Senior Lecturer, Zoology and Ecology
- myles.menz@jcu.edu.au
Martijn van de Pol
- Associate Professor, Mathematical Modelling
- martijn.vandepol@jcu.edu.au
Slade Allen-Ankins
- Research Fellow
- slade.allenankins@jcu.edu.au
Noel Preece
- Adjunct Associate Professor
- noel.preece@jcu.edu.au
Conrad Hoskin
- Professor
- conrad.hoskin@jcu.edu.au
On the physiology of plant transpiration (Old ID 27163)
The aim is to better understand plant water use (transpiration): to determine the relative roles of the environment, both aerial [absorbed radiation, both long and short wave, humidity, windspeed and temperature] and below ground [e.g. soil moisture content and resistance to root penetration], and of the plant [stomata, water pathways inside the leaf, and root water status] in controlling transpiration rate. The project will improve formulae describing the environmental and biological aspects of transpiration. A novel technique will be developed to measure the water potential distribution within the leaf. Results will inform breeders of the abilities of different plants to transpire rapidly when demand is high, or to conserve water.
Ecoacoustic data analysis (Old ID 27596)
It is now possible to collect and store vast amounts of environmental sound, or bioacoustic data. The promise of environmental recording is that it could allows us to monitor populations of vocal fauna (birds, mammals and amphibians), but there is so much data, it is not possible for expert human listeners to listen to and identify each species. Thus, artificial intelligence, or AI methods would be useful. However, ecologists also lack the large amounts of labelled data required to easily create convolutional neural networks typically used for such tasks. To develop new AI approaches for monitoring fauna, we require skilled people. This grant is intended to support a post-doctoral fellow to conduct this work.
Research Assistant salary while on maternity leave (Old ID 23547)
This grant is for a casual research assistant to continue my existing research experiments and assist with running my lab while I am on maternity leave. The projects the research assistant will be assisting on are: - Can species interactions drive rapid niche adaptation? This project examines how the temperature niche of a rainforest fly evolves when it has intense competition from a closely related species with a very similar temperature niche. - Species interactions and the evolution of mating displays and preferences. This project examines how male mating display and female preference are expressed when closely related species are present, with a view to examining whether they can rapidly change their signal and preference to minimise detrimental hybridisation.
Survey for mahogany gliders and monitor population trends (Old ID 26997)
The Mahogany Glider is an Endangered mammal of north Queensland. I have been doing research of this species, with my PhD student Eryn Chang. The project is to better resolve the distribution and population size of this species and to work out whether it is declining. Terrain is an NRM group (funded by Qld and Federal government) that does community-based conservation work in the Wet Tropics of north Qld. They also want to know the distribution, population size and population trends in this species, so they are contributing funding to Eryn’s PhD project.
Resolving the genetics of adaptation and speciation (Old ID 22899)
The project will greatly assist my career development by increasing my skills and impact in genomic research. Genomic data is currently produced in a process (via next generation sequencing) that results in unordered markers. However the majority can only be resolved with ordered markers (i.e. genes arranged along chromosomes). This project will provide a way to determine the genetic structure that underlies SNPs and other types of genomic data for non-model organisms in order to product ordered markers.
Invasion Alert—A Machine Learning-based Platform for Invasive Ant Detection and Recognition (Old ID 27268)
For control/eradication measures to be effective, early detection of invasive ants is essential. Current conventional methods require taxonomic expertise and are time and labour intensive. This project will develop a vision-based platform that uses machine learning for the real-time detection and identification of established invasive ants in Australia. This will provide an automated, cost-effective monitoring tool that can speed up the detection and identification process, thus enable efficient and timely response to the potential spread of these species.
The ecological and evolutionary legacy of extreme climatic events for food web resilience (Old ID 27891)
There is growing evidence that extreme events such as heatwaves will have the most immediate and harmful effects on plants and animals as the climate changes. This is particularly true for species-rich tropical ecosystems, where recent heatwaves have already caused severe population crashes for some species. We therefore need to understand what happens when whole communities of interacting species are subjected to a heatwave or other extreme climatic event. To understand fully how and why ecological communities are altered by extreme events, we need to carry out experiments simulating extreme conditions and follow the consequences over multiple generations. In most contexts such experiments would be practically or ethically impossible. However, we can design experiments that do exactly this by focusing on a special study system: food webs of Drosophila fruit flies and the parasitic wasps that consume them in the rainforests of tropical Queensland.
Communication and coordination of collective behaviour across spatial scales in animal societies (Old ID 26191)
We will test commonalities and differences in group coordination tasks using spatial movement and active communication in three species of social mammals.
Monitoring the Wet Tropic's endangered upland frogs (Old ID 27742)
This grant will fund equipment and fieldwork costs for two PhD students, working on upland frog population monitoring in north Qld. The project involves setting up monitoring techniques to assess population trends in threatened species on the Wet Tropics mountain-tops, and conduct that monitoring at regular intervals.
Australian ASEAN Food, Logistics and Technology Network (Old ID 24957)
The Australia ASEAN region is building trade and cultural relationships across many aspects of society and business. SME's are fundamental to both trade and cultural relationships. The Australia ASEAN Future Food, Logistics and Technology network will support SME's by driving the conversion of Australia and ASEAN's bioscience and technology. The aim is to develop a knowledge network of Australian and ASEAN universities, industry associations and businesses that enables research, cultural exchange and trade.
Complex growth rate evolution in a latitudinally widespread species
- 2004
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Researchers:Lin Schwarzkopf
Shade acclimation of rainforest leaves to colonization by lichens
- 2002
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Researchers:Betsy Jackes
Master of them all: performance specialization does not result in trade-offs in tropical lizards
- 2007
- Evolutionary Ecology
- Researchers:Lin Schwarzkopf
Does total reproductive effort evolve independently of offspring size?
- 2001
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Researchers:Lin Schwarzkopf
Nomadic movement in tropical toads
- 2002
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Researchers:Lin Schwarzkopf
Start Date:
01 Jan 2011
End Date:
01 Jan 2016
Start Date:
01 Jan 2009
End Date:
01 Jan 2016
Start Date:
01 Jan 2023
End Date:
01 Jan 2023
Start Date:
01 Jan 2022
End Date:
01 Jan 2023
Start Date:
01 Jan 2022
End Date:
01 Jan 2025
Start Date:
01 Jan 2022
End Date:
01 Jan 2022
Start Date:
01 Jan 2017
End Date:
01 Jan 2017
Start Date:
01 Jan 2009
End Date:
01 Jan 2011
Start Date:
01 Jan 2009
Start Date:
01 Jan 2012
End Date:
01 Jan 2014