Understanding the Ecological Causes and Consequences of Sex Reversal
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March 2018 I started my Ph.D. at the University of Canberra. I worked in the Institute for Applied Ecology with Dr. Stephen Sarre and Dr. Arthur Georges. My research was studying the ecological significance of sex-reversal in the central bearded dragons (Pogona vitticeps) and the Eastern three-lined skink (Bassiana duperreyi). Both of these species have flexible sex-determining systems where chromosomes determine sex, but when eggs are incubated at extremes, this can cause phenotypic sex to switch!
For P. vitticeps, my work complemented findings conducted in lab settings. In laboratory studies sex-reversed females (ZZf) have shown to have more offspring, bolder behaviours, and higher activity patterns than normal males (ZZm) or normal females (ZWf). In 2015 our group found the first occurance of sex-reversal documented in the wild in Southwest Queensland. My research was the work to investigate how sex-reversed individuals varied in behaviour, dispersal, and physiology in the wild. I quantified the frequency of sex-reversal within a population to understand if specific behaviours or life-history traits drive the success of of these individuals. I focused on comparing how spatial ecology, thermoregulation, dispersal, and energetics varies among sex-reversed females, females, and males. Findings from my work has been published in Molecular Ecology, Journal of Animal Ecology, and Journal of Experimental Biology. |
MovementUnderstanding how an organism uses and traverses it's environment can provide valuable information on what factors drive individual movement. I'm interested in integrating accelerometers and radio-telemetry to investigate how behaviours and movement patterns vary across sex and season.
1. Use radio telemetry to understand what drives variation in movement patterns among individuals 2. Use accelerometers to compare activity patterns and specific behavioural patterns 3. Understand how vital rates are affected by an individual’s activity and movement |
EnergeticsFor many reptiles, energy use is the major driver for underlying patterns of growth and reproduction. This part of my project I'm interested in using a two aspects of their energetics and test if they very across sex.
1. Understand how animals behaviourally thermoregulate through the landscape by comparing how body temperatures (Tb) deviate from environmental temperatures (Te) 2. Use doubly labelled water to understand how field metabolic rates and water turnover vary between active and inactive bouts 3. Use these data to validate the use of accelerometers as proxies for energetics |
