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80
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Introduction
I am interested in how the physiological traits and adaptations of the organism relate to its ecological niche and its changing distributions across space and time. Moreover, I’m interested in the implications that these limitations have on the ecological role and services provided by the target species. I often collect data in a laboratory setting and develop spatial models from these data, but test these hypotheses by taking measurements of free-ranging animals in the field.
Current institution
Additional affiliations
October 2023 - present
Department of Biodiversity Conservation and Attractions (Western Australia)
Position
- Research Officer
Description
- My role at DBCA is to develop spatiotemporal models of ecological processes underpinning the management and conservation of biodiversity in the forests of Western Australia's Southwest Floristic biodiversity hotspot.
April 2020 - December 2023
Position
- Research Associate
Description
- The focus of my role in the Fordham Lab (GlobalCheC) was in developing process-oriented models of extinction. During my time there I focused on the rapid decline of moas following Maori colonisation of New Zealand.
July 2016 - March 2020
Position
- Reserach Fellow
Description
- My focus was the metabolic ecology of plant seeds in storage and in the conservation and restoration of short-range endemic and rare plants, and spatial modelling of these responses as contributors of rarity
Education
March 2007 - March 2012
March 2000 - November 2004
Publications
Publications (80)
DNA metabarcoding has played a pivotal role in advancing our understanding of the diversity and function of soil-inhabiting fungi. The Australian Microbiome Initiative has produced an extensive soil fungal metabarcoding dataset of more than 2000 plots across a breadth of ecosystems in Australia and Antarctica. Sequence data requires rigorous approa...
Energetics is considered a fundamental ‘currency’ of ecology and the way that metabolic rate (MR)—the rate of energy expenditure on biological processes—scales relative to the size of the organism can be both an adaptive benefit and a constraint in mediating the energetic demands of ecological processes. Since few investigations have examined this...
Lay Summary
This editorial introduces a special issue of Conservation Physiology reporting on ‘Traits and Measurements in Plant Conservation’. This article covers previous preferences by different fields of conservation biology in reporting plant or animal research and the manner in which physiological analyses can bridge these divides. Focusing on...
Human settlement of islands across the Pacific Ocean was followed by waves of faunal extinctions that occurred so rapidly that their dynamics are difficult to reconstruct in space and time. These extinctions included large, wingless birds called moa that were endemic to New Zealand. Here we reconstructed the range and extinction dynamics of six gen...
Defining plant ecophysiological responses across natural distributions enables a greater understanding of the niche that plants occupy. Much of the foundational knowledge of species’ ecology and responses to environmental change across their distribution is often lacking, particularly for rare and threatened species, exacerbating management and con...
Drivers and dynamics of initial human migrations across individual islands and archipelagos are poorly understood, hampering assessments of subsequent modification of island biodiversity. We developed and tested a new statistical-simulation approach for reconstructing the pattern and pace of human migration across islands at high spatiotemporal res...
The success of plant translocations depends on defining habitat attributes critical for establishment and survival, and on locating this habitat in the landscape. We used species distribution modelling, coupled with fine-scale characterisation of local habitat attributes to characterise and identify potential sites for translocation of Tetratheca e...
Seed germination responses for most narrow-range endemic species are poorly understood, imperilling their conservation management in the face of warming and drying terrestrial ecosystems. We quantified the realized microclimatic niches and the hydrothermal germination thresholds in four threatened taxa (Tetratheca erubescens, Tetratheca harperi, Te...
Human settlement of islands across the Pacific Ocean was followed by waves of faunal extinctions that occurred so rapidly that their dynamics are difficult to reconstruct in space and time. These extinctions included large, wingless birds endemic to New Zealand called moa. We reconstructed the range and extinction dynamics of six genetically distin...
![Figure 3. Pie charts as taken from [27], highlighting the proportion of...](publication/373079091/figure/fig1/AS:11431281181073026@1691842562339/Pie-charts-as-taken-from-27-highlighting-the-proportion-of-invertebrate-groups-in_Q320.jpg)
Translocation science has made considerable progress over the last two decades; however, reptile translocations still frequently fail around the world. Major knowledge gaps surround the basic ecology of reptile species, including basic factors such as habitat preference, which have a critical influence on translocation success. The western spiny-ta...
Context
Anthropogenic habitat degradation resulting from agricultural, mining, and urban development is a leading cause of global insect declines, but the recovery of insect communities and functional guilds is rarely assessed during ecological restoration.
Objectives
Assess the effects of vegetation community composition and structure on insect s...
Global warming is now predicted to exceed 1.5°C by 2033 and 2°C by the end of the 21st century. This level of warming and the associated environmental variability are already increasing pressure on natural and human systems. Here we emphasize the role of physiology in the light of the latest assessment of climate warming by the Intergovernmental Pa...
An emerging research program on population and geographic range dynamics of Australia's mammals illustrates an approach to better understand and respond to geographic range collapses of threatened wildlife in general. In 1788, Europeans colonized an Australia with a diverse and largely endemic mammal fauna, where many species that are now extinct o...
Global-scale ecological changes and intensifying habitat destruction and have caused alarming declines in wildlife populations, resulting in a great need for concerted efforts towards their conservation. Despite this, animals are frequently overlooked in restoration and management initiatives and therefore populations often do not reassemble follow...
Aim: The drivers and dynamics of initial human migrations across individual islands and archipelagos are poorly understood, affecting assessments of human-modification of island biodiversity. Here, we describe and test a process-explicit approach for reconstructing human arrival and expansion on islands, which combines archaeological and climate re...
Context
Rates of habitat destruction are increasing globally, and recent years have seen a growing focus on returning lands degraded through anthropogenic activities to functional and sustainable ecosystems. Animals provide a range of services critical to healthy ecosystems, yet in assessments of restoration progress they are often assumed to retur...
Patchy resource distribution can cluster predator activity around areas of the highest productivity in ecosystems. For the endangered Western Spiny‐tailed Skink (Egernia stokesii badia) in Western Australia, the log piles that they permanently inhabit in an otherwise patchy, arid landscape, represent a potentially reliable, high abundance food sour...
The return of vegetation to mined lands often requires broadcast seeding of diverse native seed mixes. However, seeds are highly adapted to germination windows with specific hydrothermal thresholds that maximize the likelihood of seedling survival, and post‐mining landscapes typically offer markedly different hydrothermal conditions than pre‐distur...
A central principle of threatened species management is the requirement for detailed understanding of species habitat requirements. Difficult terrain or cryptic behaviour can, however, make the study of habitat or microhabitat requirements difficult, calling for innovative data collection techniques. We used high-resolution terrestrial LiDAR imagin...
Restoration seedbanks have become a key infrastructure resource in efforts to restore damaged and degraded environments across the globe. Large‐scale ecological restoration typically utilises large volumes of valuable, usually wild‐collected seeds, but insufficient knowledge of seed biology (including storage requirements in some cases) and ecology...
Native bees are declining in many regions, often associated with loss of natural habitat. Urbanisation replaces natural vegetation with a highly-modified landscape, where residential gardens are a major component of urban greenspace. While many cities retain native vegetation remnants within the urban matrix, these are often small, isolated and deg...
As human activities destroy and degrade the world's ecosystems at unprecedented scales, there is a growing need for evidence-based methods for ecological restoration if we are to preserve biodiversity and ecosystem services. Mining represents one of the most severe anthropogenic disturbances, often necessitating intensive intervention to restore th...
The incorporation of conservation physiology into environmental management, particularly ecological restoration, is underutilised, despite the capacity of such approaches to discern how populations respond to the challenges of unpredictable and potentially inhospitable environments. We explore several examples where detailed mechanistic understandi...
The nine currently recognized species of moa (Order – Dinornithiformes; Bonaparte 1853) suffered extinction soon after New Zealand was settled by humans. They were the result of an evolutionary radiation that produced a unique guild of birds – giant, and totally wingless species that evolved in the absence of non-volant mammals. Recent advances in...
The storage of seeds in seed banks is a primary strategy for plant conservation world-wide in the face of unprecedented biodiversity loss. For example, the Western Australian Seed Centre is responsible for >16,000 accessions of almost 4,000 wild species, including collections that represent the sole remaining wild populations of a species, or popul...
Mineral extraction activities are intensely disruptive to ecosystems and their associated fauna. Few countries globally have comprehensive legislation surrounding mine site restoration, but within Australia, restoration of discontinued mine sites is a legislative requirement. However, substantial ambiguity regarding the optimal techniques for resto...
Aim
Forecasting the influence of climate change on coral biodiversity and reef functioning is important for informing policy decisions. Dominance shifts, tropicalization and local extinctions are common responses of climate change, but uncertainty surrounds the reliability of predicted coral community transformations. Here, we use species distribut...
Although urbanisation can result in habitat loss, some species persist within urban vegetation remnants. Due to urban development, these species are often the targets of mitigation translocation; for example, the Quenda (Isoodon fusciventer, Marsupialia, Peramelidae), native to southwestern Australia. We assessed the foraging patterns and habitat p...
Background and aims:
Mycorrhizal fungi are a critical component of the ecological niche of most plants and can potentially constrain their geographic range. Unlike other types of mycorrhizal fungi, the distributions of orchid mycorrhizal fungi (OMF) at large spatial scales are not well understood. Here, we investigate the distribution and diversit...
Environmental change and biodiversity loss are but two of the complex challenges facing conservation practitioners and policy makers. Relevant and robust scientific knowledge is critical for providing decision-makers with the actionable evidence needed to inform conservation decisions. In the Anthropocene, science that leads to meaningful improveme...
Mitigation translocation is a subgroup of conservation translocation, categorized by a crisis‐responsive time frame and the immediate goal of relocating individuals threatened with death. However, the relative successes of conservation translocations with longer time frames and broader metapopulation‐ and ecosystem‐level considerations have been us...
The direct impacts of anthropogenic habitat loss on fauna have attracted considerable global research focus. However, it is not only these overt impacts of human activities that are contributing to the global biodiversity crisis. Other disturbances, such as artificial light, anthropogenically generated noise, dust, vibrations, and physical visual d...
Despite their diversity and the potential for specialized pollination systems, Australian Fabaceae have received little attention in pollination studies. In the Southwest Australian Floristic Region (SWAFR), a recognized biodiversity hotspot, co-occurring and abundant species of Faboideae exhibit a range of floral colours and forms, suggestive of a...
Aim
The management and restoration of ecological processes mediated by biotic interactions is now broadly advocated and may be achieved by targeting restoration towards key agents. Although theoretically examined, a practical approach to incorporating the physiology and energetics of insects into restoration planning is poorly articulated. I aimed...
Habitat loss is a leading cause of biodiversity declines globally, and there has been increasing recognition in recent years of the importance of restoring degraded habitats to functional ecosystems to ameliorate this loss. Despite the critical roles animals play in ecosystems, animals are often overlooked in assessments of ecological restoration s...
Seed germination is a critical stage in the life cycle of most plants and is defined by specific tolerance thresholds beyond which rates and success of germination rapidly decline. Previous studies have demonstrated that widespread plant species commonly germinate over a broad range of temperatures and water stress levels, whereas range-restricted...
Understanding the behavioural responses of animals to habitat change is vital to their conservation in landscapes undergoing restoration. Studies of animal responses to habitat restoration typically assess species presence/absence; however, such studies may be restricted in their ability to show whether restoration is facilitating the return of sel...
1. Short‐range endemic plants often have edaphic specializations that, with their restricted distributions, expose them to increased risk of anthropogenic extinction.
2. Here, we present a modeling approach to understand habitat suitability for Ricinocarpos brevis R.J.F.Hend. & Mollemans (Euphorbiaceae), a threatened shrub confined to three isolate...
Minimal annual rainfall in arid environments results in low productivity ecosystems with fluctuating food availability. Large mammalian predators that require frequent consumption of vertebrate prey tend to be less abundant in desert environments; however, such environments often support numerous large‐bodied carnivorous reptiles. Diet is a fundame...
Caladenia is a diverse Australian genus that is exceptional among orchids in having both species pollinated by food‐seeking and sexually deceived insects. Here, we investigated the pollination of Caladenia nobilis , a species predicted to be food‐deceptive due to its large, cream‐coloured and apparently nectarless flowers.
Pollinator observations w...
Although several approaches have been suggested, there is no broadly accepted single approach for quantitative characterization of thermal performance in ectotherms. I sought to identify the most appropriate non-linear function with which to represent thermal performance of ectothermic metabolic rate, and to interrogate the biological relevance of...
Globally increasing rates of mine site discontinuations are resulting in the need for immediate implementation of effective conservation and management strategies. Surveying vegetation structure is a common method of assessing restoration success; however, responses of fauna to mine site restoration remain largely overlooked and understudied despit...
Trait‐based approaches have improved our understanding of plant evolution, community assembly and ecosystem functioning. A major challenge for the upcoming decades is to understand the functions and evolution of early life‐history traits, across levels of organization and ecological strategies. Although a variety of seed traits are critical for dis...
The collection and storage of wild seeds in seed banks is a primary strategy for conserving plant biodiversity and is a fundamental step in the restoration of degraded landscapes. Given the current demand for wild-sourced seed, effective, economical and efficient storage is of global importance. At Kings Park in Western Australia, we routinely stor...
Fauna-mediated ecosystem service provision (e.g. seed dispersal) can be difficult to quantify and predict because it is underpinned by the shifting niches of multiple interacting organisms. Such interactions are especially complex in tropical ecosystems, including endangered peat forests of Central Borneo, a biodiversity hot spot and home to the cr...
We explore a recent innovative variation of closed-system respirometry for terrestrial organisms, whereby pO2is repeatedly measured fluorometrically in a constant-volume chamber over multiple time points. We outline a protocol that aligns this technology with the broader literature on aerial respirometry, including the calculations required to accu...
The passage of seeds through an animal's gut can improve the probability of germination for some plants. We followed 13 Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus wurmbii) in a peatland forest in the Sabangau Forest, Central Kalimantan and collected their faecal samples opportunistically. From these samples, we identified 13 angiosperm species' seed, which...
There is increasing investment globally in seed storage facilities for a wide array of purposes, from food security to biodiversity conservation. Best practice when storing seeds in this manner is to periodically test collections for viability, such that declining viability can be used as a trigger for management actions. Typically, viability testi...
Species distribution models can be informative of the biodiversity impacts of changing environments at global, national, and regional scales, but are often constrained in their resolution to extents not relevant to individual, intensive ecological management programs. We constructed a high-resolution topoclimatic model of spring and summer temperat...
Na kb , 86 Rb kb , Apis mellifera, cost of living, field metabolic rate, honeybee Field metabolic rate (FMR) links the energy budget of an animal with the constraints of its ecosystem, but is particularly difficult to measure for small organisms. Landscape degradation exacerbates environmental adversity and reduces resource availability, imposing h...
1. Rates of land degradation have outpaced our capacity to achieve global restoration goals using seed sourced exclusively from local, wild seed collections
2. In order to overcome this challenge, Seed Production Areas (SPA) deserve broader application and greater conceptual and practical rigour in their design to produce seeds effectively for a va...
Seasonal acclimatisation of thermal tolerance, evaporative water loss and metabolic rate, along with regulation of the hive environment, are key ways whereby hive-based social insects mediate climatic challenges throughout the year, but the relative importance of these traits remains poorly understood. We examined seasonal variation in metabolic ra...
Seasonal variation in metabolic rate and evaporative water loss as a function of ambient temperature were compared in two species of bees. The endemic blue-banded bee, Amegilla chlorocyanea, is a solitary species that is an important pollinator in the south-west Australian biodiversity hotspot. Responses were compared with the European honeybee, Ap...
The ecological processes that are crucial to an animal's growth, survival, and reproductive fitness have energetic costs. The imperative for an animal to meet these costs within the energetic constraints of the environment drives many aspects of animal ecology and evolution, yet has largely been overlooked in traditional ecological paradigms. The f...
We describe how behavioural responses are an important adjunct to physiological responses for two dunnart marsupials that live in arid environments. Behavioural responses of the Stripe-faced Dunnart Sminthopsis macroura and the Ooldea Dunnart S. ooldea differed with acclimation to four ambient temperature (Ta) regimes, 12 h:12 h of 5–15 °C, 12–22 °...
The measurement of (86)Rb turnover recently has been suggested as a useful method of measuring field metabolic rate in small animals. We investigated a proposed mechanism of (86)Rb turnover, its analogy for K(+), by comparing the turnover of (86)Rb in a model insect, the rhinoceros beetle Xylotrupes gideon, fed diets of plum jam, or plum jam enrich...
Background and Aims Few phylogeographic studies have been undertaken of species confined to narrow, linear coastal systems where past sea level
and geomorphological changes may have had a profound effect on species population sizes and distributions. In this study,
a phylogeographic analysis was conducted of Eucalyptus gomphocephala (tuart), a tree...
The doubly labelled water method ( DLW ) is widely used to measure field metabolic rate ( FMR ), but it has some limitations. Here, we validate an innovative technique for measuring FMR by comparing the turnover of isotopic rubidium ( ⁸⁶ R b k b ) with DLW depletion and the rate of CO 2 production ( ) measured by flow‐through respirometry (FTR) for...
This study investigated the standard metabolic rate (SMR) and evaporative water loss (EWL) responses of three Australian trapdoor-constructing mygalomorph spider species, two undescribed arid-zone species (Aganippe 'Tropicana A' and A. 'Tropicana B') and a mesic-dwelling species (A. rhaphiduca) to acute environmental regimes of temperature and rela...
Metabolic rate and evaporative water loss (EWL) were measured to quantify the thermoregulatory patterns of two dasyurids, the stripe-faced dunnart (Sminthopsis macroura) and the Ooldea dunnart (S. ooldea) during acute exposure to Ta between 10 and 35°C. S. macroura maintained consistent Tb across the Ta range, whereas S. ooldea was more thermolabil...
Stripe-faced dunnarts (Sminthopsis macroura) and Ooldea dunnarts (S. ooldea) were acclimated for 2 weeks to ambient temperature (T(a)) regimes of 12-22°C, 18-28°C and 25-35°C, and then measured for standard, basal (BMR) and maximum (MMR) metabolic rate using flow-through respirometry. Sminthopsis macroura maintained a stable body temperature under...
High ambient temperatures can adversely affect insects through high evaporative
water loss (EWL) and reduction of metabolic activity through enzyme denaturation.
Establishing the relationship between the temperature at which these processes
become detrimental and regulatory behaviour is critical in resolving the
mechanisms by which insects cope wit...
We investigated interactions of body mass with geographical location, and five climatic measures for two Australian rodents, the native Australian sandy inland mouse (Pseudomys hermannsburgensis) and the introduced house mouse (Mus domesticus). Correlation and regression analyses identified interactions of body mass with latitude, longitude, averag...
This study compared torpor as a response to food deprivation and low ambient temperature for the introduced house mouse (Mus musculus) and the Australian endemic sandy inland mouse (Pseudomys hermannsburgensis). The house mouse (mass 13.0+/-0.48 g) had a normothermic body temperature of 34.0+/-0.20 degrees C at ambient temperatures from 5 degrees C...
The honey possum, Tarsipes rostratus, is the only non-flying mammal to live on an exclusive diet of nectar and pollen and is the sole representative of the Family Tarsipedidae (Kirsch 1977; Kirsch, Lapointe and Springer 1997). T. rostratus is a predominantly nocturnal/crepuscular inhabitant of the south-west of Western Australia, occurring in flori...
Questions
Question (1)
I've got a series of non-linear functions for which I want to calculate the auc at a series of x-intervals automatically and populate a data frame. I can calculate the auc values as one-off estimates, but I'm having trouble setting a code to calculate them automatically for an atomic vector. I.e, I can't work out the code to calculate auc in reference to a column of x-values that are already in my target data frame. I can't be the first person to need to do this, so any insights will be greatly appreciated. Cheers
