Not lost in translation: how to get information from other species' calls? Information reduces life's uncertainties, and so underlies adaptive decisions in a changing world. However, the importance of information gained from other species is largely overlooked, despite the flow of information, just like resources, affecting individual fitness and population viability. This project aims to use a novel integration of visual and acoustic ecology to test how animals gain reliable information about p ....Not lost in translation: how to get information from other species' calls? Information reduces life's uncertainties, and so underlies adaptive decisions in a changing world. However, the importance of information gained from other species is largely overlooked, despite the flow of information, just like resources, affecting individual fitness and population viability. This project aims to use a novel integration of visual and acoustic ecology to test how animals gain reliable information about predators by eavesdropping on the alarm calls of other species. Thus, the project focuses on alarm calls because information about danger is critical to animal survival. The outcomes of the project could help us to understand how natural information webs form and function, and so refine predictions about the impact of environmental change on animal communities.Read moreRead less
Lucky in Love: the role of chance in sexual selection. Is luck important in the lives of animals? This project aims to ascertain how much variation in male mating success is attributable to male quality, traits or resources and how much is attributable to luck. Mating is the most important evolutionary process. Male mating success should be highly predictable: males with the best genes, most preferred displays or highest quality resources should attract females. Male mating success is, however, ....Lucky in Love: the role of chance in sexual selection. Is luck important in the lives of animals? This project aims to ascertain how much variation in male mating success is attributable to male quality, traits or resources and how much is attributable to luck. Mating is the most important evolutionary process. Male mating success should be highly predictable: males with the best genes, most preferred displays or highest quality resources should attract females. Male mating success is, however, surprisingly difficult to predict and we currently write off up to 90 per cent of the variance as noise. This project aims to quantify the relative importance of deterministic and stochastic sources of variation in male mating success. Ignored variance may be an untapped opportunity to understand selection.Read moreRead less
Resolving evolutionary problems at the fish-tetrapod transition. The project aims to investigate very early Australian tetrapod trackways and conduct fieldwork to resolve the place of origin and timing of the evolution of the first tetrapods. The evolution of fishes to tetrapods was one of the key events in evolution. Studies on Northern Hemisphere fossils place an origin for the group around 380 million years ago. Australian fossils suggest a much older origin. New micro computed tomography dat ....Resolving evolutionary problems at the fish-tetrapod transition. The project aims to investigate very early Australian tetrapod trackways and conduct fieldwork to resolve the place of origin and timing of the evolution of the first tetrapods. The evolution of fishes to tetrapods was one of the key events in evolution. Studies on Northern Hemisphere fossils place an origin for the group around 380 million years ago. Australian fossils suggest a much older origin. New micro computed tomography data from Australian 3-D fossil fishes, combined with study of rare tetrapod gill arch bones, would enable us to determine the origins of tetrapod air-breathing and its ecological setting. The project may facilitate a rewriting of vertebrate evolution's most significant first step.Read moreRead less
Global patterns of mammalian biodiversity loss over the last 50,000 years. Wild mammals have experienced major population losses and extinctions in recent centuries, but their communities had already suffered from widespread losses during the Pleistocene. Existing literature has focused on documenting individual extinctions or continental-scale patterns. This project aims to show how biodiversity loss played out at the local scale around the world. It will use palaeontological and zooarchaeologi ....Global patterns of mammalian biodiversity loss over the last 50,000 years. Wild mammals have experienced major population losses and extinctions in recent centuries, but their communities had already suffered from widespread losses during the Pleistocene. Existing literature has focused on documenting individual extinctions or continental-scale patterns. This project aims to show how biodiversity loss played out at the local scale around the world. It will use palaeontological and zooarchaeological data to show how losses varied in space, how population sizes changed, and how species attributes such as rarity and body size related to loss. The world of mammals has become more homogeneous as biodiversity has declined. The challenge is to show how that happened across space and time.
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Population divergence and the thermal ecology of sexual conflict. This project aims to test how populations of introduced mosquitofish have adapted to local differences in water temperature (such as Tasmania versus Queensland). To what extent has natural selection (for survival) and sexual selection (the ability of males to acquire mates and/or females to resist unwanted matings) driven the local adaptation of populations? Many species have traits that evolve under intense sexual conflict – nota ....Population divergence and the thermal ecology of sexual conflict. This project aims to test how populations of introduced mosquitofish have adapted to local differences in water temperature (such as Tasmania versus Queensland). To what extent has natural selection (for survival) and sexual selection (the ability of males to acquire mates and/or females to resist unwanted matings) driven the local adaptation of populations? Many species have traits that evolve under intense sexual conflict – notably when males harass or coerce females into mating and females resist these attempts. It is assumed that sexual conflict traits are rarely affected by the local environment. The project will test the hypothesis that temperature can actually drive the evolution of such traits, specifically coercion and resistance to mating.Read moreRead less
The fitness consequences of age-dependent changes in cognitive abilities. This project aims to investigate health-related topics in invasive fish. The evolution of large brains suggests that smarter individuals have more offspring due to natural and sexual selection. This project aims to test if the ability to perform cognitively challenging tasks predicts reproductive success. In addition, many life history traits show a trade-off between early and late life performance. This project will test ....The fitness consequences of age-dependent changes in cognitive abilities. This project aims to investigate health-related topics in invasive fish. The evolution of large brains suggests that smarter individuals have more offspring due to natural and sexual selection. This project aims to test if the ability to perform cognitively challenging tasks predicts reproductive success. In addition, many life history traits show a trade-off between early and late life performance. This project will test this prediction to see if individuals with above average cognitive performance when young are below average when old, that is faster 'cognitive senescence', or whether some individuals stay relatively smarter than others throughout their lives.Read moreRead less
Vocal mimicry in songbirds. Many of the world’s largest clade of birds - the songbirds - incorporate vocal mimicry in their songs, but while scientific interest in vocal mimicry dates from Aristotle, limited progress has been made. With our unique research program we aim to provide an empirically based, theoretically informed understanding of avian vocal mimicry. In an important advance, we will examine both sexes to test long-held male-centric assumptions about evolutionary origins and maintena ....Vocal mimicry in songbirds. Many of the world’s largest clade of birds - the songbirds - incorporate vocal mimicry in their songs, but while scientific interest in vocal mimicry dates from Aristotle, limited progress has been made. With our unique research program we aim to provide an empirically based, theoretically informed understanding of avian vocal mimicry. In an important advance, we will examine both sexes to test long-held male-centric assumptions about evolutionary origins and maintenance of this trait. Crucially, we focus on lineages found only in Australia and PNG, where songbirds originated, to develop a robust scientific understanding of vocal mimicry across the entire songbird clade, and so provide an important new perspective on why and how song began.Read moreRead less
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
Can inbreeding avoidance cause the evolution of sex-biased dispersal? This project aims to combine unique long-term data with a novel Citizen Science approach to seek to provide the first complete test of the hypothesis that inbreeding avoidance can cause one of the best known patterns in mammal and bird societies - sex differences in when and how far juveniles disperse. Dispersal is a critically important ecological and evolutionary process, as it influences the fate of populations, and also de ....Can inbreeding avoidance cause the evolution of sex-biased dispersal? This project aims to combine unique long-term data with a novel Citizen Science approach to seek to provide the first complete test of the hypothesis that inbreeding avoidance can cause one of the best known patterns in mammal and bird societies - sex differences in when and how far juveniles disperse. Dispersal is a critically important ecological and evolutionary process, as it influences the fate of populations, and also determines the individuals with which a disperser will spend the remainder of its life. It therefore shapes the likelihood that kin will interact to cooperate or compete, and determines the pool of individuals with which the disperser can mate.Read moreRead less
Sex and the generation gap: seasonal changes in sex allocation. Answering the question 'When is it better to produce more sons than daughters?' has shed important insights into fundamental questions in biology and led to theory that can be applied to problems in agriculture, fisheries and conservation. The project will extend the current theory to increase its applicability, and test it using an introduced pest fish.