Broad research interests
I am interested in how animals make a living in changing environments. My work asks how climate, food, behaviour, and physiology shape where animals can live, how much energy they need, and how populations persist. This work sits at the intersection of field ecology, laboratory physiology, and mechanistic modelling. In practice, we might be collecting animals in the field, measuring metabolic rates or thermal performance in the lab, maintaining animals in captivity, working with historical datasets, or building biophysical models. I am especially interested in students who want to move between hands-on fieldwork, careful lab measurements, and quantitative tools.
PhD Students
Funded PhD project: arid-zone ecology, energetics, and biophysical modelsI am looking for a PhD student to join a funded project on how arid-zone animals respond to environmental variability and climate change. The project uses Australia's arid-zone lizards as a model system, but a student could focus on lizards, insects, or the connections between them.
The broad goal is to combine field observations, physiological data, food availability, and biophysical models to predict animal responses to climate and disturbance. The student would help collect new field data from remote arid-zone locations across Australia, including sites with historical data from long-term pitfall trapping and ecological monitoring. These data will validate biophysical and Dynamic Energy Budget models that predict activity, metabolism, food intake, growth, reproduction, and population responses.
This project will involve fieldwork in remote arid and semi-arid Australia. Students should be excited by field biology, comfortable working in teams, and interested in both practical field skills and quantitative approaches. Prior experience with reptiles, insects, physiology, R, GIS, mark-recapture, or modelling would be useful.
The broad goal is to combine field observations, physiological data, food availability, and biophysical models to predict animal responses to climate and disturbance. The student would help collect new field data from remote arid-zone locations across Australia, including sites with historical data from long-term pitfall trapping and ecological monitoring. These data will validate biophysical and Dynamic Energy Budget models that predict activity, metabolism, food intake, growth, reproduction, and population responses.
This project will involve fieldwork in remote arid and semi-arid Australia. Students should be excited by field biology, comfortable working in teams, and interested in both practical field skills and quantitative approaches. Prior experience with reptiles, insects, physiology, R, GIS, mark-recapture, or modelling would be useful.
Masters/ Honours Students
I am also happy to discuss Masters projects connected to the same broad research program. These can be scaled around a focused question while still contributing to the larger field, lab, and modelling framework. Possible projects could examine lizard activity, diet, prey availability, microhabitat use, metabolic rate, thermal biology, or model validation. Some may involve arid-zone fieldwork, while others could use local field sites, laboratory measurements, existing datasets, or modelling.
Undergraduate
There are also opportunities for undergraduate students and volunteers who want hands-on experience with local lizard ecology and physiology. A lot of this work starts simply: going into the field, flipping rocks, looking for lizards, recording where they are found, and asking why they are there. One current direction focuses on the costs of overwintering in Australian lizards. Winter can limit activity, feeding, digestion, and growth, but animals may differ in how they use refuges, conserve energy, or take advantage of warm periods.
Students may help with:
- Local field surveys and rock-flipping searches for lizards.
- Measuring microhabitat conditions and seasonal activity.
- Keeping and maintaining a lizard colony.
- Feeding, husbandry, and careful animal care.
- Measuring metabolic rates and related physiological traits.
- Testing how diet, temperature, and recent environmental history affect energy use.
Because we maintain lizards in the lab, there are many opportunities to develop small projects on temperature, diet, growth, metabolism, winter conditions, and individual energetic strategies.
Students may help with:
- Local field surveys and rock-flipping searches for lizards.
- Measuring microhabitat conditions and seasonal activity.
- Keeping and maintaining a lizard colony.
- Feeding, husbandry, and careful animal care.
- Measuring metabolic rates and related physiological traits.
- Testing how diet, temperature, and recent environmental history affect energy use.
Because we maintain lizards in the lab, there are many opportunities to develop small projects on temperature, diet, growth, metabolism, winter conditions, and individual energetic strategies.
Reach out!
If you're keen and you're looking for an opportunity to get some experience or want to look into postgraduate opportunities. Please send me an email ([email protected]). I am most interested in students who are thoughtful, motivated, careful with animals and data, and excited by the challenge of connecting field observations, lab measurements, and ecological models.