Current Researchers

Academics

Research Interests

Professor Edyvane is the leader (and Principal Scientist) of the newly established, Marine Biodiversity Branch of the Department of Natural Resources, Environment and the Arts, and also, is an adjunct Professor (Marine Conservation) with Charles Darwin University.

Karen is primarily a marine habitat ecologist with specialist expertise and experience in coastal-marine biodiversity conservation, Marine Protected Area design and system planning, marine monitoring, and coastal-marine ecosystem-based planning.

Career Highlights

Her career highlights include: technical and policy blueprints for the establishment of Marine Park systems in South Australia and Tasmania; the planning and establishment of the Great Australian Bight Marine Park; large-scale systematic survey, mapping and ecological classification of South Australia’s underwater, inshore marine habitats and ecosystems (including the identification of a potential Marine Parks and Reserves); and the conservation and threat assessment of Tasmania’s Giant Kelp forests. At the national and State level, she has held a wide range of technical, policy and statutory positions in marine biodiversity conservation and coastal and marine management and also, undertaken a range of international marine/coastal consultancy work (including Vietnam, Korea, Indonesia, Timor Leste). She maintains close research and teaching links with universities (including Charles Darwin University, James Cook University, University of Adelaide and the University of Tasmania), including supervision of postgraduate students.

Current Major Projects

• Development of the NT Marine Protected Areas Strategy.
• Coastal and marine biodiversity surveys and habitat mapping of the NT.
• Planning and establishment of the Nino Conis Santana Marine Park - Timor Leste's first Marine Park.
• Coastal and marine ecotourism on the north coast of Timor Leste.
• Coastal and marine habitat mapping of the Timor Leste (with Charles Darwin University).
• NT Marine Debris Monitoring.
• Coastal and Marine Biodiversity Management Strategy for the NT.
• Development of coastal, estuarine and marine indicators for NRM and SoE reporting for the NT.
• Development of a NT Coastal & Marine GIS Database.

Profile and publications

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Research Interests

Shane is a project officer of the newly established, Marine Biodiversity Branch of the Department of Natural Resources, Environment and the Arts. His main interest is in the biology, ecology and conservation of marine invertebrates. Shane is also involved in marine habitat mapping and Reef Check training in Timor-Leste, marine debris monitoring in the Northern Territory and the development of the Northern Territory marine atlas.

Current Major Projects

• Coastal and marine biodiversity surveys and habitat mapping of the NT.
• Coastal and marine habitat mapping of the Timor Leste (with Charles Darwin University).
• NT Marine Debris Monitoring.
• Development of a NT Coastal & Marine GIS Database.

Publications

Linnane A.J., Penny S.S. and Ward T.M. (in press) Contrasting fecundity, size at maturity and reproductive potential of southern rock lobster Jasus edwardsii in two South Australian fishing regions. Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the UK

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Research Interests

Barry Russell is a Principal Scientist (Marine Biodiversity) in the Marine Biodiversity Group of the Department of Natural Resources, Environment and the Arts.

He has over 30 years research experience on the systematics, ecology and behaviour of tropical demersal fishes of the Indo-West Pacific. He has worked extensively in the N. Australia - SE Asian region, and undertaken collaborative scientific projects with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), German Agency for Technical Co-operation (GTZ), the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), The Nature Conservancy (TNC), and CSIRO.

His current research interests include:

• Rapid biodiversity assessment
• Bioregional/ biodiversity studies of shelf/ slope fishes of the northern Australian region
• Deepwater fish biodiversity of tropical Indo-W. Pacific basins
• Taxonomy and systematics of lizardfishes (Synodontidae) and threadfin breams (Nemipteridae) of the world
• History of early natural history in northern Australia

Current Major Projects

• Coastal and marine biodiversity surveys and habitat mapping of the NT.
• Coastal and Marine Biodiversity Management Strategy for the NT.
• Development of coastal, estuarine and marine indicators for NRM and SoE reporting for the NT.
• NT Coastal and Marine Atlas

Publications

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Research Interests

I am interested in understanding patterns of evolution and diversity, my work is focused on scincid lizards and parastacid crayfish in Australia, New Caledonia and New Guinea.

Current Grant Funded Projects

Evolutionary patterns in freshwater crayfish (in collaboration with Alastair M Richardson, University of Tasmania; Chris Austin, Charles Darwin University; and Pierre Horwitz, Edith Cowan University).

A taxonomic and phylogenetic study of the Egernia striolata (Scincidae) species group (in collaboration with Ross Sadlier, Australian Museum, Glenn Shea, Sydney University and Memento Hermes, University of Queensland).

Phylogeny of a newly discovered New Guinean radiation of lizards (in collaboration with Glenn Shea, Sydney University and Fred Kraus, Bishop Museum).

Curriculum Vitae

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Reprints of research papers

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Research Interests

Scott is currently employed as a marine vertebrate scientist with NRETA. His specialties include sea turtles and dugongs, with previous research primarily focused on the foraging ecology of green and hawksbill turtles. Interests also include community based natural resource management in Indigenous communities. His experience encompasses most of northern Australia including North Queensland, the Northern Territory and the Kimberley coast of WA. Professional memberships include: member of the IUCN Sea Turtle Specialist Group, member of the Australian Turtle Recovery Team and member of the IUCN Taskforce for the Recovery of the Hawksbill Turtle.

Current Major Projects

• Nesting biology and ecology of olive ridley turtles, Tiwi Islands -  in partnership with Tiwi Land Council.
• Nesting biology and community monitoring of nesting flatback turtles, Sir Edward Pellew Islands, Gulf of Carpentaria – in partnership with Lianthawirriyarra Sea Rangers.
• Nesting biology of sea turtles at Groote Eylandt – in partnership with Anindilyakwa Land Council.
• Foraging and tracking studies of several species of sea turtle.

Profile and publications

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Postgraduate research fellows

Research Interests

Iain has a background in oceanography and ecology and has combined the two interests in marine ecology. In recent years, Iain’s research has focused on marine vertebrates, specifically seal, seabird and shark species. Iain's work has covered life history, population dynamics, movement and foraging behaviour of marine vertebrates, linking these to natural and anthropogenic environmental variation (e.g. climate change and fishing pressure.)

After completing his PhD in August 2005, Iain has been working for the School for Environmental Research and the Antarctic Wildlife Research Unit at the University of Tasmania.

Current Projects

• Estimating fishing-related mortality and designing sustainable management protocols for shark fisheries in Northern Australia
• Foraging ecology and behaviour of southern elephant seals from Macquarie Island and Weddell seals in the Ross Sea (in collaboration with the University of Tasmania)
• Winter foraging ecology of Weddell seals in relation to sea-ice variability (in collaboration with the University of Tasmania)

Profile and publications [pdf format]

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PhD students

Current Project: PhD Topic: The impacts of climate change on bioclimatic modelling and prediction
Principle Supervisor: Professor Mike Hutchinson (Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies, The Australian National University)

Many assessments of the impact of climate change on plant and animal distributions begin by creating bioclimatic models of a species' present and projected future range. Bioclimatic models establish a relationship between a species' current geographic distribution and bioclimatic variables, such as temperature of the hottest three months, precipitation of the driest three months, etc. This relationship may then be extrapolated to simulate future climates, giving an estimate of the species' possible distributions.

A variety of models have been developed to establish the relationship between a species' distribution and climatic variables. One of these models is BIOCLIM. This modelling tool has been found to be remarkably successful in estimating the spatial distributions of plant and animal. In mathematical terms, it essentially does very simple but effective probability density estimation. This aspect of the method is not generally appreciated. A principal limitation of the BIOCLIM method is that it does not take into accounts the potential correlations and interactions among the bioclimatic variables. The interaction between the bioclimatic variables is an important issue for climate change scenarios because the climate may change in such a way that some change in temperature for example may be compensated by change in rainfall or moisture.

The main aim of my research is to assess the performance of the current bioclimatic modelling procedure and develop ways to improve the bioclimatic modelling, particularly developing more robust assessments of the impacts of climate change by addressing issues such as the correlations and interactions between the bioclimatic variables and investigating the design of new bioclimatic variables that can effectively account for interactions between existing bioclimatic predictors.

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Project title: Molecular Evolution and Biogeography of Land Yabbies.
Supervisor: Prof. Christopher M Austin;

Project outline: For an arid country, Australia has a diverse and unique freshwater crayfish fauna. A most distinctive and unusual component of this fauna are the burrowing crayfish, including the land yabbies. Taxonomically, burrowing crayfish are placed in the genera Engaeus, Engaewa, Tenuibranchiurus, Geocharax, Cherax and Parastacoides, and, collectively, occur in all Australian States and Territories.

The Engaeus group is the only freshwater crayfish genus in the world able to complete their entire life cycle underground and without access to surface water. Knowledge of Engaeus and Engaewa species is especially limited, because of their cryptic burrowing habit, and a number of species are of very high conservation significance due to their limited distributions, poor powers of dispersal, and encroachment of their habitat by urban and agricultural development. It is noteworthy that 13 of the 35 currently recognised Engaeus species are listed as endangered on the "IUCN Red List of Threatened Species". Additionally, a number of other freshwater crayfish species are of very high conservation significance (e.g. Engaewa, Gramastacus and Cherax) and information is generally lacking for Cherax from remote parts of northern Australia and New Guinea. I plan to use DNA sequencing and numerical phylogenetic methods to investigate aspects of the taxonomy, evolution, biogeography and macro-ecology of the Engaeus genus and related genera. This project will not only contribute significantly to our taxonomic knowledge of this important fauna but will contribute more generally to our understanding of the conservation needs of these animals, the aquatic environments they inhabit and to biogeographic relationships of aquatic fauna within and between Australia and New Guinea.

Once a comprehensive molecular data set has been assembled, I will generate phylogenetic hypotheses of relationships to provide a framework for addressing some important questions in evolution and macro-ecology. This will include an investigation of: what controls rates of diversification, the relationship between molecular evolution and speciation, and, how body size, life history, ecology and range-size vary on a continental scale. This project forms part of the Australian component of the Global Crayfish Phylogeny Project and is funded by an ARC discovery grant and Charles Darwin University.

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I completed my Honours project at Charles Darwin University (CDU) in collaboration with the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) in 2006. My Honours project assessed spot-matching software for use in individual identification of whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) at Ningaloo Reef, WA. I am now enrolled in the PhD program at CDU. My project, which is a collaboration between CDU and AIMS, examines the movement patterns and feeding ecology of reef sharks at Ningaloo Reef. I am primarily focussing on movement patterns of black tip (Carcharhinus melanopterus), white tip (Triaenodon obesus) and grey reef sharks (Carcharhinus amblyrhynchos), but am also monitoring juvenile lemon sharks (Negaprion acutidens) and nervous sharks (Carcharhinus cautus).

Movement patterns are monitored using acoustic tags that are implanted internally in sharks and transmit information to an array of acoustic receivers. The receivers have been deployed in a number of key locations at Ningaloo Reef to maximise coverage of the study site. I will also observe fine-scale shark movement by actively tracking a number of tagged black tip reef sharks. This part of my study will provide information to help answer why reef sharks aggregate in inshore areas and how these sharks move and use their habitat.

The next stage of my project will look at the feeding habits of reef sharks at Ningaloo Reef. I will use fatty acid profiles and stable isotope ratios to examine the diet of reef sharks to establish the trophic role of these sharks within the reef community.

Publications

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Past, Present and Future: Processes of Human Adaptation to Risk in Complex Adaptive Systems
Rapid and exponential population growth, unhalting development in vulnerable disaster prone regions and anthropogenic climate change are contributing to unprecedented disasters from known natural phenomena across the globe. Despite extensive government planning, preparation, risk management and mitigation programs to deal with the potential effects of such phenomena, some human groups and individuals are overwhelmed when an extreme event strikes resulting in chronic losses. Other groups, however, respond proactively, dramatically reducing losses in their community. The latter seem to have adapted or learnt from their own, or others, past risk experience more successfully than the former. If we could better understand this inconsistency in human behavior then many lives can be saved and future losses can be reduced if not avoided completely. Furthermore, learning from past risk experience can help policy makers design better policies that contribute to more resilient and sustainable communities.

The thesis adopts critical realist philosophy and applies soft systems thinking and theories from cognitive science and risk research to gain a better understanding of individual and social processes of adaptation to riskor learning from risk experience. To investigate the problem in-depth, a case study community prone to tropical cyclone risk in the city of Darwin in the Northern Territory (NT) of Australia is investigated. The case study community is viewed as a complex adaptive system: a socio-environmental system in which humans learn and human behaviour changes in response to its surrounding environment and one that is characterized by self organization and emergence. Primary data in the form of in-depth interviews and secondary data in the form of historical documents, laws, media and so on are used to investigate human adaptation to risk at individual and social system scales. The study reveals that a number of beliefs, perceptions, traditions, myths and urban legends emerge from the complex adaptive system and contribute to both past and present adaptive and maladaptive practices. The study concludes by presenting a number of possible approaches or interventions that would better enable individuals and society to adapt to risk especially in the context of a changing world with an uncertain future.

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