Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE190100660
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$409,805.00
Summary
Unravelling the impacts of global warming on whole ecological communities. This project aims to resolve how entire ecological communities respond to global warming and identify the mechanisms that underpin these responses. Combining manipulations of marine invertebrate communities with assays of energy use, the project expects to reveal emergent effects that cannot be predicted from responses of individual species. The expected outcome is a mechanistic understanding of how warming affects resour ....Unravelling the impacts of global warming on whole ecological communities. This project aims to resolve how entire ecological communities respond to global warming and identify the mechanisms that underpin these responses. Combining manipulations of marine invertebrate communities with assays of energy use, the project expects to reveal emergent effects that cannot be predicted from responses of individual species. The expected outcome is a mechanistic understanding of how warming affects resource use of entire communities that will increase our capacity to predict the consequences of climate change on food-web stability and productivity. These findings should reveal how species interactions alter energy use and invasion risk which is vital to manage ecosystems in a warmer world.Read moreRead less
Growing up with global change. This project aims to quantify how native bird populations will respond to global warming. The project will investigate how vulnerable nestling birds are to high temperatures, and the impact of early-life heat stress on adult performance and fitness in the wild. Although growing animals are most sensitive to heat, and stress during early-life often has irreversible negative effects, we know very little about long-term consequences of early-life heat stress. The inte ....Growing up with global change. This project aims to quantify how native bird populations will respond to global warming. The project will investigate how vulnerable nestling birds are to high temperatures, and the impact of early-life heat stress on adult performance and fitness in the wild. Although growing animals are most sensitive to heat, and stress during early-life often has irreversible negative effects, we know very little about long-term consequences of early-life heat stress. The intended outcomes will increase our capacity to predict impacts of climate warming before population declines become evident. Improved predictions are beneficial to identify urgent threats and optimise conservation efforts.Read moreRead less
Predicting invertebrate life cycles under variable climates. This project seeks to characterise and predict the responses of invertebrates to climate variability and climate change. Alterations to the developmental trajectory are a major way that organisms adapt their life cycles to climatic variability. Many invertebrates avoid extremes of heat, cold and dry by entering a quiescent or diapause state, often at the egg stage. This project plans to apply novel high-throughput methods for character ....Predicting invertebrate life cycles under variable climates. This project seeks to characterise and predict the responses of invertebrates to climate variability and climate change. Alterations to the developmental trajectory are a major way that organisms adapt their life cycles to climatic variability. Many invertebrates avoid extremes of heat, cold and dry by entering a quiescent or diapause state, often at the egg stage. This project plans to apply novel high-throughput methods for characterising developmental patterns in the eggs of invertebrates in conjunction with microclimate models and modern phylogenetic methods to understand and predict responses to climatic variability. The methods are expected to be transferable to other invertebrates and may lead to breakthroughs in pest management and conservation.Read moreRead less
Hydroregulation – a missing piece of the climate change puzzle. There is a great need for process-explicit approaches to the puzzle of how organisms will respond to changes in temperature and rainfall. To achieve this for animals, behavioural buffering of both body temperature and water balance must be accounted for. Much is known about thermoregulation, but 'hydroregulation' stands out as a major missing piece of the climate change forecasting puzzle. This project will integrate new modelling m ....Hydroregulation – a missing piece of the climate change puzzle. There is a great need for process-explicit approaches to the puzzle of how organisms will respond to changes in temperature and rainfall. To achieve this for animals, behavioural buffering of both body temperature and water balance must be accounted for. Much is known about thermoregulation, but 'hydroregulation' stands out as a major missing piece of the climate change forecasting puzzle. This project will integrate new modelling methods and empirical approaches to understand the connections between thermoregulation, hydroregulation, activity and, ultimately, distribution and abundance. It will test the predictions against long-term activity observations of reptiles and invertebrates from the Australian arid zone.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE170100601
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$372,000.00
Summary
Incorporating developmental plasticity into models of species distributions. This project aims to develop a generalizable framework for predicting effects of environmental variability on organisms’ developmental strategies, using anuran tadpoles as a test case. This framework will reveal how environmental variability influences geographic variation in developmental strategies, and provide tools to account for that variation in mechanistic models of species distributions. These tools are expected ....Incorporating developmental plasticity into models of species distributions. This project aims to develop a generalizable framework for predicting effects of environmental variability on organisms’ developmental strategies, using anuran tadpoles as a test case. This framework will reveal how environmental variability influences geographic variation in developmental strategies, and provide tools to account for that variation in mechanistic models of species distributions. These tools are expected to increase the capacity to predict extinction risk in changing environments, and be amenable to any taxon or environment, providing a solid foundation for understanding the evolution of life-history strategies in variable environments.Read moreRead less
Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment And Facilities - Grant ID: LE100100041
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$100,000.00
Summary
A high-resolution isotope facility for low cost analysis of water, plant, and soil/sediment samples to understand environmental change. The most significant environmental challenges facing Australia include ensuring sustainable management of our water resources and conservation of both terrestrial and marine biodiversity, particularly in the face of our changing climate and land-use. The new instruments will accelerate progress across a number of projects aimed at understanding the developme ....A high-resolution isotope facility for low cost analysis of water, plant, and soil/sediment samples to understand environmental change. The most significant environmental challenges facing Australia include ensuring sustainable management of our water resources and conservation of both terrestrial and marine biodiversity, particularly in the face of our changing climate and land-use. The new instruments will accelerate progress across a number of projects aimed at understanding the development of groundwater resources, the relative dependency of ecosystems on groundwater versus soil and surface water, and an assessment of the likely impacts of altered hydrology, especially dewatering and salinisation, on ecosystems. In addition, they will also be used to extend our knowledge of climate variability in the recent past and increase understanding of critical marine resources.Read moreRead less
Consequences of temporal community turnover. This project aims to understand how environmental change affects compensatory dynamics of species. Species numbers do not change over time in local ecological communities, but species composition is changing at an unprecedented level across the globe. The implications of these compensatory dynamics for the resilience of ecological communities and how they affect ecosystems are important for community ecology and conservation. This project could reveal ....Consequences of temporal community turnover. This project aims to understand how environmental change affects compensatory dynamics of species. Species numbers do not change over time in local ecological communities, but species composition is changing at an unprecedented level across the globe. The implications of these compensatory dynamics for the resilience of ecological communities and how they affect ecosystems are important for community ecology and conservation. This project could reveal the functional consequences of temporal community change, contributing new insights into the effects of environmental change especially on soil ecosystems.Read moreRead less
Computing the climate-life history nexus for Australia's fauna. Life histories are the trajectories organisms follow as they develop, grow, reproduce and age; they are shaped by evolution and limited by the physical and biological environment. Recent breakthroughs by the CI allow the computation of life histories in any sequence of climatic environments, with demonstrated potential to gain new insights into the past, present and future responses of species to climate variability and change. This ....Computing the climate-life history nexus for Australia's fauna. Life histories are the trajectories organisms follow as they develop, grow, reproduce and age; they are shaped by evolution and limited by the physical and biological environment. Recent breakthroughs by the CI allow the computation of life histories in any sequence of climatic environments, with demonstrated potential to gain new insights into the past, present and future responses of species to climate variability and change. This project aims to apply the new methods to understand how species' life histories have adapted to Australia's unique physical conditions and predict how they will respond to future conditions. It will simultaneously lay the foundations for a long-term, open-access research program on species' climate responses.Read moreRead less
The basis of oyster resilience to global environmental change. This project aims to investigate the impact of global environmental change on the survival of Australia’s oyster industry, by combining the science of genetics, physiology and ecology to identify already resilient oysters. Through the first complete understanding of resilience in oysters, including the trade-offs they have made in other fitness traits, the project develops new capacities to 'climate and future-proof' our natural oyst ....The basis of oyster resilience to global environmental change. This project aims to investigate the impact of global environmental change on the survival of Australia’s oyster industry, by combining the science of genetics, physiology and ecology to identify already resilient oysters. Through the first complete understanding of resilience in oysters, including the trade-offs they have made in other fitness traits, the project develops new capacities to 'climate and future-proof' our natural oyster populations and the Australian oyster industry, to enable the restoration of degraded oyster habitats. This project will ensure the future of an iconic and economically important national industry and food source and contribute to preserving the critical cultural links of Indigenous Australians with their lands.Read moreRead less
Coping with temperature extremes: morphological constraints on leaf function in a warmer, drier climate. This project will determine how hydraulic properties of temperate, evergreen leaves affect their capacity to cope with seasonal variation in temperature extremes. The results will enhance mechanistic understanding of temperature tolerance, and inform prediction of vegetation change in response to climate warming and increasing CO2 concentrations.