研究领域

Conservation and Wildlife Biology/Animal Behaviour and Evolution (Habitat use, behavioural ecology, social behaviour, hybridization, parthenogenetic organisms, evolutionary ecology)

The impact of climate on animals My research in this field is focused on understanding how climate impacts on the distribution and abundance of terrestrial animals. My approach combines laboratory and field investigations of ecophysiology and behaviour. A particular focus is on developing trait-based, mechanistic models that enable predictions of distributions under current and future climates with GIS data. I have been working with Prof. Warren Porter at The University of Wisconsin to develop computer programs that use energy balance equations and microclimate models to predict how traits (behaviour, morphology and physiology) of organisms interact with climatic conditions to affect key fitness components such as potential activity time, development and growth rates, water balance and food requirements. Importantly, this trait-based approach makes it possible to incorporate evolutionary change. Current and widely-used regression-based approaches to this problem are unable to incorporate evolution because they use the distribution points of the organism as a starting point rather than its traits. The trait-based models we are developing work for any kind of ectotherm or endotherm and hold great promise for enhancing our understanding of the adaptive significance of climate-sensitive traits, for looking at selection gradients across landscapes, and of course for predicting the impact of climate change. The evolution of parthenogenesis The maintenance of sexual reproduction is regarded as a major unsolved problem in evolutionary biology. My research has focused on species that have secondarily lost sexual reproduction and instead reproduce by parthenogenesis. There are strong geographical and genetic correlates of the transition from sex to parthenogenesis. Specifically their distributions are often biased towards high latitudes, high altitudes or arid environments. For instance, in the Australian arid zone, we find multiple instances of parthenogenesis in lizards, insects and plants. Parthenogenetic organisms are also very often polypoids, hybrids or both. I am interested in extent to which the ecological and geographical tendencies of parthenogenetic organisms are influenced by hybridization and by polyploidy. We need to answer this question if we are to truly understand the relevance of naturally parthenogenetic organisms to the paradox of sex. I approach this question using a number of parthenogenetic organisms from the Australian arid zone, including the grasshopper Warramaba virgo, the stick insects Sipyloidea nelida and S. similis, and the gecko Heteronotia binoei. I combine phylogeographic analysis, life-history and ecophysiological studies to compare the ecology and evolution of the parthenogenetic lineages with that of their sexual progenitors. An exciting prospect in this research is the ability, at least in W. virgo, to artificially synthesize hybrid and polyploid lineages. My collaborators in this reserach are Prof. Craig Mortiz (The University of Califorina, Berkeley) and Dr. Mark Blacket (The University of Melbourne).

近期论文

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Climate and Fire Scenario Uncertainty Dominate the Evaluation of Options for Conserving the Great Desert Skink. Conservation Letters. 9. 2016 Colour change on different body regions provides thermal and signalling advantages in bearded dragon lizards. Royal Society of London. Proceedings B. Biological Sciences. 283. 2016 A dynamic energy budget for the whole life-cycle of holometabolous insects. Ecological Monographs. 85. 2015 Bergmann meets Scholander: geographical variation in body size and insulation in the koala is related to climate. Journal of Biogeography. 42. 2015 Climate-related spatial and temporal variation in bill morphology over the past century in Australian parrots. Journal of Biogeography. 42. 2015 Couples that have chemistry: when ecological theories meet. OIKOS. 124. 2015 Dynamic Energy Budget Theory: An Efficient and General Theory for Ecology. BioScience. 65. 2015 Is fire a threatening process for Liopholis kintorei, a nationally listed threatened skink?. Wildlife Research. 42. 2015 Modeling behavioral thermoregulation in a climate change sentinel. Ecology and Evolution. 5. 2015 Morphology and burrowing energetics of semi-fossorial skinks (Liopholis spp.). Journal of Experimental Biology. 218. 2015 Ontogenetic and interspecific scaling of consumption in insects. OIKOS. 124. 2015 Predicting climate warming effects on green turtle hatchling viability and dispersal performance. Functional Ecology. 29. 2015 Testing mechanistic models of growth in insects. Royal Society of London. Proceedings B. Biological Sciences. 282. 2015