Manipulative mothers and family feuds: evolution of maternal effects under mother-offspring conflict. Can mothers shape the lives of their offspring and their grand-offspring? Can siblings shape the lives of their brothers and sisters? This project will address how mother and offspring strategies affect current and future generations. This is crucial for understanding how mothers will direct and accelerate evolutionary change in our changing world.
Navigating brains: the neurobiology of spatial cognition. Navigation is one of the most crucial and most challenging problems animals face. Behavioural analyses have shown that animals make use of a number of different mechanisms to navigate, but very little is known of how different forms of spatial information are processed and integrated by the brain. The project aims to tackle this by placing tethered ants in a virtual-reality simulation of their real environment allowing precise control of ....Navigating brains: the neurobiology of spatial cognition. Navigation is one of the most crucial and most challenging problems animals face. Behavioural analyses have shown that animals make use of a number of different mechanisms to navigate, but very little is known of how different forms of spatial information are processed and integrated by the brain. The project aims to tackle this by placing tethered ants in a virtual-reality simulation of their real environment allowing precise control of visual navigational cues, as well as the opportunity to study the brains of the tethered ants as they solve the real-world challenge of finding home. This may reveal how simple brains efficiently solve navigational tasks, which may inform both cognitive biology and bio-inspired computation.Read moreRead less
Gamete-specific knockout of Fizzy-Related to examine its meiotic role in oocytes and sperm. Fizzy-Related is a gene that appears to be essential in making an ovulated egg, and it may also have an important role to play in making sperm. A mouse knockout will be generated to examine exactly how it functions; because it affects the egg number remaining in the ovary and egg quality Fizzy-Related may be eventually an important therapeutic target.
The Origin and Evolution of the Animal Phyla inferred from Analysis of Multiple-Gene Data. Australia has recently begun an extensive research programme in the genomics of our flora and fauna. The enormous amounts of data that emerge from such research are highly complex, but they hold the key to understanding how biological organisms change over time. Our research will untangle that data to answer fundamental, unanswered questions in modern science: How did the animal groups originate? How are ....The Origin and Evolution of the Animal Phyla inferred from Analysis of Multiple-Gene Data. Australia has recently begun an extensive research programme in the genomics of our flora and fauna. The enormous amounts of data that emerge from such research are highly complex, but they hold the key to understanding how biological organisms change over time. Our research will untangle that data to answer fundamental, unanswered questions in modern science: How did the animal groups originate? How are they related to each other? How is biodiversity changing? The answers to these questions and the new analytical tools we will develop will put Australia firmly on the international "map" of Bioinformatics.Read moreRead less
Nowcasting and Interpreting the Australian Economy. This project aims to investigate methods for nowcasting and interpreting the Australian economy. This is determining the current state of the economy and the factors contributing to it.
This project expects to generate new knowledge on how unconventional, new, data sources and innovative methods can be used to in nowcasting and how the Australian economy can be modelled.
The expected outcomes include timely new indicators of the state of the ec ....Nowcasting and Interpreting the Australian Economy. This project aims to investigate methods for nowcasting and interpreting the Australian economy. This is determining the current state of the economy and the factors contributing to it.
This project expects to generate new knowledge on how unconventional, new, data sources and innovative methods can be used to in nowcasting and how the Australian economy can be modelled.
The expected outcomes include timely new indicators of the state of the economy, and the factors contributing to it. This should provide significant benefits through informing the conduct of Australian macroeconomic policy, as the appropriate policy response depends not only on knowing the current state of the economy but understanding the economic factors underlying it.
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Oxygen isotope discrimination during C4 photosynthesis. Plants with the C4 photosynthetic pathway, like sugarcane and pasture grasses, are vital to Australian agriculture and natural ecosystems. This project will use novel laser spectroscopy to measure oxygen isotope discrimination during photosynthesis and quantify the influence of C4 plants on isotopic signatures of atmospheric CO2.
Transgenerational Consequences of Different Environmental Experiences. The project aims to deliver an integrative overview of behavioural, evolutionary and environmental epigenetics. In particular, by studying why stress-related experiences of organisms (e.g. exposure to toxins) can be passed onto the future generations regardless of its seemingly fitness-reducing impacts. It also aims to test if the seemingly beneficial effect of non-stress related experiences (e.g. environmental enrichment) ca ....Transgenerational Consequences of Different Environmental Experiences. The project aims to deliver an integrative overview of behavioural, evolutionary and environmental epigenetics. In particular, by studying why stress-related experiences of organisms (e.g. exposure to toxins) can be passed onto the future generations regardless of its seemingly fitness-reducing impacts. It also aims to test if the seemingly beneficial effect of non-stress related experiences (e.g. environmental enrichment) can be inherited transgenerationally. This project involves both research synthesis (e.g. meta-analysis) and experiments on zebrafish employing cutting-edge statistical, computational and molecular methods along with behavioural assays. Also, the outcomes of the synthesis are expected to guide future work in the field. Read moreRead less
Analysing and modelling molecular rate variation among nuclear and mitochondrial genomes. My research will have important practical benefits for bioinformaticians and evolutionary biologists, because existing analytical methods will be rigorously tested and new tools will be developed. Australia has a comparatively high concentration of researchers in this field, so my research will foster domestic collaboration and import international expertise. The research will provide important insights int ....Analysing and modelling molecular rate variation among nuclear and mitochondrial genomes. My research will have important practical benefits for bioinformaticians and evolutionary biologists, because existing analytical methods will be rigorously tested and new tools will be developed. Australia has a comparatively high concentration of researchers in this field, so my research will foster domestic collaboration and import international expertise. The research will provide important insights into the rates and patterns of genetic changes associated with domestication, and into variation in evolutionary rates among the primate ancestors of humans. In addition to developing new software, which will be made publicly available, I will develop new evolutionary models to supplement existing software packages. Read moreRead less
Resilience of eucalypts to future droughts. This project aims to examine how resilient Eucalyptus species are to future droughts by combining data synthesis, manipulative experiments and modelling. Climate change is expected to increase the frequency, magnitude and duration of future droughts, with major environmental and socio-economic consequences for Australia. Current predictive capacity is extremely limited: experiments are limited in scale and cannot capture important global change interac ....Resilience of eucalypts to future droughts. This project aims to examine how resilient Eucalyptus species are to future droughts by combining data synthesis, manipulative experiments and modelling. Climate change is expected to increase the frequency, magnitude and duration of future droughts, with major environmental and socio-economic consequences for Australia. Current predictive capacity is extremely limited: experiments are limited in scale and cannot capture important global change interactions, whilst models do not represent the functional characteristics and adaptions of eucalypts. This project will develop a strong evidence- and process-based understanding to quantify the functional behaviour of drought-adapted Eucalyptus species and leverage this insight to make future model projections.Read moreRead less
Are proposed land-based sinks for greenhouse gases resilient to climate change and natural variability? One strategy to reduce the scale of future climate change is to enhance the storage of carbon in vegetation and soils. Evidence suggests carbon stored in vegetation and soils is itself vulnerable to climate change, placing this stored carbon at risk; this project will assess this risk to advise on the reliability of using terrestrial systems as carbon sinks.