Katharina J. Peters

University of Wollongong | UOW · School of Earth, Atmospheric and Life Sciences

Dolphins are among the largest and most diverse predators in marine ecosystems, but our understanding of their foraging ecology, which is crucial for ecosystem management, is poor. Delphinus delphis (common dolphins) are found in tropical and temperate waters globally. Stomach content studies indicate they are opportunistic predators that feed loca...

Using DNA methylation profiles (n = 15,456) from 348 mammalian species, we constructed phyloepigenetic trees that bear marked similarities to traditional phylogenetic ones. Using unsupervised clustering across all samples, we identified 55 distinct cytosine modules, of which 30 are related to traits such as maximum life span, adult weight, age, sex...

Using DNA methylation profiles (n = 15,456) from 348 mammalian species, we constructed phyloepigenetic trees that bear marked similarities to traditional phylogenetic ones. Using unsupervised clustering across all samples, we identified 55 distinct cytosine modules, of which 30 are related to traits such as maximum life span, adult weight, age, sex...

Aging, often considered a result of random cellular damage, can be accurately estimated using DNA methylation profiles, the foundation of pan-tissue epigenetic clocks. Here, we demonstrate the development of universal pan-mammalian clocks, using 11,754 methylation arrays from our Mammalian Methylation Consortium, which encompass 59 tissue types acr...

The ecology and evolution of prey populations are influenced by predation and pre-dation risk. Our understanding of predator-prey relationships between sharks and dolphins is incomplete due to the difficulties in observing predatory events directly. Shark-inflicted wounds are often seen on dolphin bodies, which can provide an indirect measure of pr...

Have you ever heard about, or maybe even seen, a whale or a dolphin that was helplessly lying on the beach or stuck in very shallow water? These are called “stranding events” or “strandings,” and have been documented since the fourth century. Back then, strandings involving cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises) were welcome events because the...

Knowledge of an animal's chronological age is crucial for understanding and predicting population demographics, survival and reproduction, but accurate age determination for many wild animals remains challenging. Previous methods to estimate age require invasive procedures, such as tooth extraction to analyse growth layers, which are difficult to c...

Dredging is an excavation activity used worldwide in marine and freshwater environments to create, deepen, and maintain waterways, harbours, channels, locks, docks, berths, river entrances, and approaches to ports and boat ramps. However, dredging impacts on marine life, including marine mammals (cetaceans, pinnipeds, and sire-nians), remain largel...

The quantification of a species’ trophic niche is important to understand the species ecology and its interactions with the ecosystem it resides in. Despite the high frequency of long-finned pilot whale (Globicephala melas edwardii) strandings on the Aotearoa New Zealand coast, their trophic niche remains poorly understood. To assess the isotopic n...

Climate impacts affect marine ecosystems worldwide with island nations such as New Zealand being extremely vulnerable because of their socio-economic and cultural dependence on the marine and costal environment. Cetaceans are ideal indicator species of ecosystem change and ocean health given their extended life span and cosmopolitan distribution, b...

OCTOPUS v.2 is an Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) compliant web-enabled database that allows users to visualise, query, and download cosmogenic radionuclide, luminescence, and radiocarbon ages and denudation rates associated with erosional landscapes, Quaternary depositional landforms, and archaeological records, along with ancillary geospatial (v...

Species occurring in sympatry and relying on similar and limited resources may partition resource use to avoid overlap and interspecific competition. Aotearoa, New Zealand hosts an extraor- dinarily rich marine megafauna, including 50% of the world’s cetacean species. In this study, we used carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes as ecological tracers...

Cetacean strandings provide important opportunities to extend current knowledge on species or populations, particularly for species that are notoriously difficult to study such as sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus; parāoa). Between 25 May and 9 June 2018, 13 male sperm whales stranded in Taranaki, Aotearoa New Zealand, with an additional male st...

Ecological niche theory predicts the coexistence of closely related species is promoted by resource partitioning in space and time. Australian snubfin (Orcaella heinsohni) and humpback (Sousa sahulensis) dolphins live in sympatry throughout most of their range in northern Australian waters. We compared stable isotope ratios of carbon (δ13C) and nit...

Conservation management of wildlife species should be underpinned by knowledge of their distribution and abundance, as well as impacts of human activities on their populations and habitats. Common dolphins (Delphinus delphis) are subject to incidental capture in a range of Australia’s commercial fisheries including gill netting, purse seining and m...

The avian beak is a key morphological trait used for foraging. If parasites alter beak shape, we may expect changes in host foraging behaviour. Larvae of the avian vampire fly Philornis downsi cause naris enlargement in Darwin's finch nestlings when first and second instar larvae consume keratin, blood and tissue from inside the beak of the develop...

OCTOPUS v.2 is an Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) compliant web-enabled database that allows users to visualise, query, and download cosmogenic radionuclide, luminescence, and radiocarbon ages and denudation rates associated with erosional landscapes, Quaternary depositional landforms and archaeological records, along with ancillary geospatial (ve...

Extinctions stemming from environmental change often trigger trophic cascades and coextinctions. Bottom–up cascades occur when changes in the primary producers in a network elicit flow-on effects to higher trophic levels. However, it remains unclear what determines a species' vulnerability to bottom–up cascades and whether such cascades were a larg...

Extinctions stemming from environmental change often trigger trophic cascades and coextinctions. Bottom-up cascades occur when changes in the primary producers in a network elicit flow-on effects to higher trophic levels. However, it remains unclear what determines a species’ vulnerability to bottom-up cascades, and whether such cascades were a lar...

Conservation management of wildlife species should be underpinned by knowledge of their distribution and abundance, as well as impacts of human activities on their populations and habitats. Common dolphins ( Delphinus delphis ) are subject to incidental capture in a range of Australia’s commercial fisheries including gill netting, purse seining and...

The original publication described FosSahul 2.0, the updated version of the FosSahul database comprising collated and quality-rated megafauna fossil ages of the Late Quaternary from Sahul, as well as R code to run the algorithm that rated the quality of each age based on criteria established by Rodríguez-Rey et al. 1. Since the paper was published...

Extinctions stemming from environmental change often trigger trophic cascades and coextinctions. However, it remains unclear whether trophic cascades were a large contributor to the megafauna extinctions that swept across several continents in the Late Pleistocene. The pathways to megafauna extinctions are particularly unclear for Sahul (landmass c...

The distribution of marine mammal species in many areas remains poorly understood, especially as observations for some taxa are rare and large-scale surveys are time consuming and extremely costly. Here, we present 36 records of 7 cetacean species (Balaenoptera brydei, B. musculus subspp., Delphinus delphis, Globicephala sp., Grampus griseus, Physe...

This is an infographic showing the main results of Peters et al. 2020 in MEPS

Fecundity selection is a critical component of fitness and a major driver of adaptive evolution. Trade‐offs between parasite mortality and host resources are likely to impose a selection pressure on parasite fecundity, but this is little studied in natural systems. The ‘fecundity advantage hypothesis’ predicts female‐biased sexual size dimorphism w...

The mechanisms leading to megafauna ( >44 kg) extinctions in Late Pleistocene (126,000—12,000 years ago) Australia are highly contested because standard chronological analyses rely on scarce data of varying quality and ignore spatial complexity. Relevant archaeological and palaeontological records are most often also biased by differential preserva...

The 2016 version of the FosSahul database compiled non-human vertebrate megafauna fossil ages from Sahul published up to 2013 in a standardised format. Its purpose was to create a publicly available, centralized, and comprehensive database for palaeoecological investigations of the continent. Such databases require regular updates and improvements...

The koala’s (Phascolarctos cinereus) distribution is currently restricted to eastern and south-eastern Australia. However, fossil records dating from 70 ± 4 ka (ka = 103 years) from south-western Australia and the Nullarbor Plain are evidence of subpopulation extinctions in the southwest at least after the Last Interglacial (128-116 ka). We hypothe...

Introduced parasites that alter their host's mating signal can change the evolutionary trajectory of a species through sexual selection. Darwin's Camarhynchus finches are threatened by the introduced fly Philornis downsi that is thought to have accidentally arrived on the Galapagos Islands during the 1960s. The P. downsi larvae feed on the blood an...

Informed conservation management of marine mammals requires an understanding of population size and habitat preferences. In Australia, such data are needed for the assessment and mitigation of anthropogenic impacts, including fisheries interactions, coastal zone developments, oil and gas exploration and mining activities. Here, we present large-sca...

Hybridization can increase adaptive potential when enhanced genetic diversity or novel genetic combinations confer a fitness advantage, such as in the evolution of anti-parasitic mechanisms. Island systems are especially susceptible to invasive parasites due to the lack of defence mechanisms that usually coevolve in long-standing host-parasite rela...

The consequences of hybridization for biodiversity depend on the specific ecological and evolutionary context in which it occurs. Understanding patterns of gene flow among hybridizing species is crucial for determining the evolutionary trajectories of species assemblages. The recently discovered hybridization between two species of Darwin's tree fi...

Floreana Island has the highest proportion of local land bird extinctions on the Galápagos Archipelago, and is home to the range-restricted and critically endangered Medium Tree Finch Camarhynchus pauper . We used acoustic surveys during 2004, 2008 and 2013 to compare the estimated population size of C. pauper and other land bird species in a remna...

Island populations have high extinction risk from introduced diseases that can spread quickly among geographically clustered naïve individuals. To conserve endemic island species, we need a suite of tools to analyse current threats posed by introduced species. Darwin’s finches of the Galápagos Islands are being decimated by parasitic larvae of the...

The significance of hybridisation for biodiversity has been the subject of a long-standing debate. Hybridisation has been characterised as being detrimental for biodiversity and speciation as it can blur the borders between distinct species. Contrastingly, hybridisation has also been described as a creative evolutionary process generating increased...

Hybrid speciation is increasingly recognized as a mechanism for novel evolutionary trajectories. However, we know very little about the ecology of a contact zone that has arisen in sympatry. This study examines the foraging behavior and fitness of two species of Darwin's tree finches (Camarhynchus parvulus, C. pauper) and hybrid offspring on Florea...

The conservation behavior framework is useful to identify key linkages between behavior and conservation practice. We apply this framework to a novel host-parasite system on the Galapagos Islands and ask if there have been changes in parasite oviposition behavior and host mortality patterns across the first decade (2004-2013) of its known associati...

Bottlenose dolphins are often targeted for cetacean tourism due to their coastal distribution and residency in some areas.However, the impacts of these activities on the animals involved are still poorly understood. This study provides a preliminary assessment of the impact of swim-with-dolphin tourism on southern Australian bottlenose dolphins (Tu...

Song is a culturally learned trait in Darwin’s finches that is used for mate choice and species recognition. Previous research has shown that song in Darwin’s ground finches remained unchanged across 40 years. Here, we test for the same pattern in three sympatric species of Darwin’s tree finches: small, medium and large tree finch (Carmarhynchus pa...