Evolution, adaptation and resilience of Australian freshwater fishes. This project will integrate comparative ecological genomics (in the wild and in the lab), phenotypic data and spatially-explicit modelling approaches to assess adaptation and vulnerability of aquatic biodiversity to environmental change. It focuses on a family of Australian freshwater fishes that evolved in response to hydrological disturbance and shows contemporary patterns of biodiversity shaped by hydroclimatic variation an ....Evolution, adaptation and resilience of Australian freshwater fishes. This project will integrate comparative ecological genomics (in the wild and in the lab), phenotypic data and spatially-explicit modelling approaches to assess adaptation and vulnerability of aquatic biodiversity to environmental change. It focuses on a family of Australian freshwater fishes that evolved in response to hydrological disturbance and shows contemporary patterns of biodiversity shaped by hydroclimatic variation and anthropogenic pressures. The project expects to disclose a positive correlation between family-wide adaptive capacity and variance in ecological disturbance. This work will address fundamental and novel questions about factors shaping adaptation and resilience along naturally and anthropogenically disturbed ecosystems.Read moreRead less
Resolving how five million years of dramatic climatic changes shaped Australia's unique fauna. Australia’s biota is a product of its unique heritage, tectonic history and most especially its climate. Over the past five million years it has been beset by a series of intense climatic shifts driven by a combination of global and regional factors. This project will be the first to track faunal responses to environmental changes across this critical interval. It will establish the dynamics of the ori ....Resolving how five million years of dramatic climatic changes shaped Australia's unique fauna. Australia’s biota is a product of its unique heritage, tectonic history and most especially its climate. Over the past five million years it has been beset by a series of intense climatic shifts driven by a combination of global and regional factors. This project will be the first to track faunal responses to environmental changes across this critical interval. It will establish the dynamics of the origin of the modern southern vertebrate fauna, analysing changes in diversity, diet and community structure. By exploring associations between phases of faunal turnover and key climatic transitions, it will bring a Southern Hemisphere perspective to evolutionary models of Cenozoic faunal change largely generated to date from Northern Hemisphere data.Read moreRead less
Understanding marine life-history patterns: an eco-energetics approach. This project aims to determine how temperature affects the energetics of development in marine invertebrates and explain why global distributions of marine organisms show the patterns they do. This project will provide new insights into whether Australia's temperate marine fauna are uniquely vulnerable to future change. Leveraging a new framework, eco-energetics, the project will determine the relative performance of differe ....Understanding marine life-history patterns: an eco-energetics approach. This project aims to determine how temperature affects the energetics of development in marine invertebrates and explain why global distributions of marine organisms show the patterns they do. This project will provide new insights into whether Australia's temperate marine fauna are uniquely vulnerable to future change. Leveraging a new framework, eco-energetics, the project will determine the relative performance of different larval types across every stage of the life history. The project will provide significant benefits such as a new powerful and comprehensive framework for understanding current and predicting future patterns in marine life, providing inferences that extend beyond the species studied in this project.Read moreRead less
Targeted gene flow for conservation. This project aims to develop targeted gene flow as a broad conservation strategy, exploiting natural geographic variation to achieve conservation outcomes. Geographic variation and local adaptation are ubiquitous within species, but conservation managers do not use this heritable variation. The project will develop decision tools to address when to time a targeted gene flow action, and where to source appropriate genetic variation. As case studies, the projec ....Targeted gene flow for conservation. This project aims to develop targeted gene flow as a broad conservation strategy, exploiting natural geographic variation to achieve conservation outcomes. Geographic variation and local adaptation are ubiquitous within species, but conservation managers do not use this heritable variation. The project will develop decision tools to address when to time a targeted gene flow action, and where to source appropriate genetic variation. As case studies, the project will try to use targeted gene flow to halt the invasion of the cane toad in northern Australia and reverse the decline of northern quolls.Read moreRead less
Demographic consequences of environmental change for wild bird populations. The project intends to improve our understanding of how climate drives shifts in body size and shape in wildlife populations, and the implications of such responses for population viability. Populations of plants and animals are showing a range of responses to recent, rapid shifts in the Earth’s climate. The ecological and evolutionary significance of these responses and the mechanisms that drive them remain largely unkn ....Demographic consequences of environmental change for wild bird populations. The project intends to improve our understanding of how climate drives shifts in body size and shape in wildlife populations, and the implications of such responses for population viability. Populations of plants and animals are showing a range of responses to recent, rapid shifts in the Earth’s climate. The ecological and evolutionary significance of these responses and the mechanisms that drive them remain largely unknown. Focusing on Australian birds, the project plans to integrate long-term records from citizen science, museum collections and field studies to conduct a comprehensive investigation of the pattern and process of morphological change. Understanding the processes driving change may help in developing strategies to manage our biodiversity as climate changes. Read moreRead less
Understanding diet designs that break life history trade-offs. The aim of this project is to understand the mechanisms by which organisms use nutrition to enhance fitness. Food availability is a key predictor of evolutionary fitness. Surprisingly, recent data shows that some key assumptions informing how these predictions are realised are not strictly correct, thus exposing a lack of important mechanistic knowledge. This project seeks to understand these mechanisms. The project plans to use nove ....Understanding diet designs that break life history trade-offs. The aim of this project is to understand the mechanisms by which organisms use nutrition to enhance fitness. Food availability is a key predictor of evolutionary fitness. Surprisingly, recent data shows that some key assumptions informing how these predictions are realised are not strictly correct, thus exposing a lack of important mechanistic knowledge. This project seeks to understand these mechanisms. The project plans to use novel genomics techniques to develop diets that support or improve fitness under circumstances such as stress or ageing, and to understand the molecular underpinnings of these improvements. Project outcomes may expand academic knowledge of fundamental nutritional biochemistry, and improve predictions of species’ responses to environmental change.Read moreRead less
Threshold evolution: conceptualising decisions as traits. All organisms make decisions, yet the diversity of decision rules across the spectrum of life can be understood through a few key evolutionary models. This project will test these models and then apply them to understanding topics as diverse as pest outbreaks, human twinning, sex ratio evolution and disease spread as a consequence of climate change.
Resolving insect evolution. Our poor understanding of the evolution of insects, life’s most successful group, is a huge gap in our knowledge of nature. By analysing genomic data the project will resolve the insect evolutionary tree and discover what drove insect evolution. This will expand our knowledge of how evolution works - a vital part of conserving our biological diversity.
Tracking the molecular dynamics of adaptation with horizontal gene transfer. This project aims to track the dynamics of adaptation with gene exchange by building the first experimental evolution model that can directly observe this process. The acquisition of genes from other strains and species (horizontal gene transfer) frequently underlies bacterial adaptation, but it is unknown how this occurs. This project aims to shift understanding of how microbial populations respond to environmental cha ....Tracking the molecular dynamics of adaptation with horizontal gene transfer. This project aims to track the dynamics of adaptation with gene exchange by building the first experimental evolution model that can directly observe this process. The acquisition of genes from other strains and species (horizontal gene transfer) frequently underlies bacterial adaptation, but it is unknown how this occurs. This project aims to shift understanding of how microbial populations respond to environmental challenges. There are significant benefits to be gained from understanding how microbes adapt in response to climate change and the widespread application of antibiotics, given that microbial populations form intimate associations with humans and sustain all of the world’s ecosystems.Read moreRead less
Interacting with change: inter-specific competition and climate change . The project aims to understand how species will adapt to climate change by examining a largely overlooked process: how competition shapes evolutionary responses. Rising temperatures will fundamentally alter where species live, re-shuffling communities. Yet, how changes in community composition will affect the way current assessments of species vulnerability to climate change is generally unknown. Expected outcomes include i ....Interacting with change: inter-specific competition and climate change . The project aims to understand how species will adapt to climate change by examining a largely overlooked process: how competition shapes evolutionary responses. Rising temperatures will fundamentally alter where species live, re-shuffling communities. Yet, how changes in community composition will affect the way current assessments of species vulnerability to climate change is generally unknown. Expected outcomes include improved species models for predicting responses to climate change through the integration of competitive effects with environmental data. The benefit will be an increased accuracy in predictions of species at risk to climate change which will guide policy and management decisions to protect vulnerable environments better.Read moreRead less