Catherine R. M. Attard

Flinders University · School of Biological Sciences

How populations of aquatic fauna persist in extreme desert environments is an enigma. Individuals often breed and disperse during favourable conditions. However, theory predicts that adaptive capacity should be low in small populations, such as in desert fishes. We integrated satellite-derived surface water data, neutral population dynamics and ada...

Knowledge about the movement ecology of endangered species is needed to identify biologically important areas and the spatio-temporal scale of potential human impacts on species. Blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus) are endangered due to twentieth century whaling and currently threatened by human activities. In Australia, they feed in the Great Sout...

Conservation translocations are becoming more common to assist in the management of threatened native species. While many translocation programs focus on maximizing survival in newly established populations, consideration is also required for the persistence of source populations. Here, we present and test a theoretical framework that assesses the...

Infectious diseases are significant demographic and evolutionary drivers of populations, but studies about the genetic basis of disease resistance and susceptibility are scarce in wildlife populations. Cetacean morbillivirus (CeMV) is a highly contagious disease that is increasing in both geographic distribution and incidence, causing unusual morta...

Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) were assessed for the first time in blue whales from the South Pacific Ocean. Concentrations of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), hexachlorobenzene (HCB) and dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane and its main metabolites (DDTs), were determined in 40 blubber samples from 36 free...

Pygmy perches (Percichthyidae) are a group of poorly dispersing freshwater fishes that have a puzzling biogeographic disjunction across southern Australia. Current understanding of pygmy perch phylogenetic relationships suggests past east–west migrations across a vast expanse of now arid habitat in central southern Australia, a region lacking conte...

Phylogenomics and species delimitation of pygmy perches (Teleostei: Percichthyidae): implications for biogeography, taxonomy and conservation

Genetic datasets of tens of markers have been superseded through next-generation sequencing technology with genome-wide datasets of thousands of markers. Genomic datasets improve our power to detect low population structure and identify adaptive divergence. The increased population-level knowledge can inform the conservation management of endangere...

Populations that are adaptively divergent but maintain high gene flow may have greater resilience to environmental change as gene flow allows the spread of alleles that have already been tested elsewhere. In addition, populations naturally subjected to ecological disturbance may already hold resilience to future environmental change. Confirming thi...

Species range limits often fluctuate in space and time in response to variation in environmental factors and to gradual niche evolution due to changes in adaptive traits. We used genome-wide data to investigate evolutionary divergence and species range limits in a generalist and highly dispersive fish species that shows an unusually wide distributi...

Species range limits often fluctuate in space and time in response to variation in environmental factors, and to gradual niche evolution due to changes in adaptive traits. We used genome-wide data to investigate evolutionary divergence and species range limits and in a generalist and highly dispersive fish species that shows an unusually wide distr...

Captive breeding programs are often a necessity for the continued persistence of a population or species. They typically have the goal of maintaining genetic diversity and minimizing inbreeding. However, most captive breeding programs have been based on the assumption that the founding breeders are unrelated and outbred, even though in situ anthrop...

Maintaining genetic diversity within captive breeding populations is a key challenge for conservation managers. We applied a multi-generational genetic approach to the captive breeding program of an endangered Australian freshwater fish, the southern pygmy perch (Nannoperca australis). During previous work, fish from the lower Murray-Darling Basin...

Population-level conservation is required to prevent biodiversity loss within a species, but it first necessitates determining the number and distribution of populations. Many whale populations are still depleted due to 20th century whaling. Whales are one of the most logistically difficult and expensive animals to study because of their mobility,...

Research in reintroduction biology has provided a greater understanding of the often limited success of species reintroductions and highlighted the need for scientifically rigorous approaches in reintroduction programs. We examined the recent genetic-based captive-breeding and reintroduction literature to showcase the underuse of the genetic data g...

Unusually low genetic diversity can be a warning of an urgent need to mitigate causative anthropogenic activities. However, current low levels of genetic diversity in a population could also be due to natural historical events, including recent evolutionary divergence, or long-term persistence at a small population size. Here, we determine whether...

Coastal southwestern Australia is used by several whale species for migrating, resting, and/or calving each year. Four of these (blue, humpback, southern right and minke whales) are currently listed as vulnerable or endangered due to prior over-exploitation by commercial whaling. The Southwest Whale Ecology Study (SouWEST), established in 2010, is...

Understanding the degree of genetic exchange between subspecies and populations is vital for the appropriate management of endangered species. Blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus) have two recognized Southern Hemisphere subspecies that show differences in geographic distribution, morphology, vocalizations and genetics. During the austral summer feed...

COI sequences.

18S sequences.

Combined sequence data used for phylogeny reconstructions.

GenBank accession numbers.

ANT sequences.

ATPSα sequences.

Background: Ecosystem engineers facilitate habitat formation and enhance biodiversity, but when they become invasive, they present a critical threat to native communities because they can drastically alter the receiving habitat. Management of such species thus needs to be a priority, but the poorly resolved taxonomy of many ecosystem engineers rep...

The worldwide distribution of blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus) has not prevented this species from becoming endangered due to twentieth century whaling. In Australia there are two known feeding aggregations of blue whales, which most likely are the pygmy subspecies (B. m. brevicauda). It is unknown whether individuals from these feeding aggregat...

The Australian freshwater catfish (Tandanus tandanus) has suffered a decline in abundance and distribution, and stocking of wild populations with hatchery-bred fish has been suggested to assist with population recovery. Here we describe the isolation and characterisation of eight microsatellite markers that may be used to assess population structur...

Nine polymorphic microsatellite loci were characterized from an enrichment library of the Australian praying mantid Ciulfina rentzi, a group with a unique reproductive morphology and behaviour. The number of alleles per locus ranged from three to 16 and heterozygosity from 0.24 to 0.94. These markers are the first microsatellites developed for any...