Find a supervisor
The following staff are available to supervise honours and masters research in the Quantitative and Applied Ecology (QAEco) research group.
Professor Brendan Wintle
I am a biodiversity scientist focusing on modelling, mapping and economic methods to inform nature conservation priorities and spending, biodiversity policy, biodiversity monitoring and reporting, and nature law reform. I'm the director of the Melbourne Biodiversity Institute.
Project topics:
- Understanding the impacts of human consumption and economic activity on species and ecosystems by linking business supply chains to habitat destruction, over-exploitation of species, water extraction, pollution and climate change.
- Understanding Bogong moth population change in relation to agriculture and climate change. The Bogong moth is an iconic and culturally significant keystone species in Australia. It has been declining steadily since the introduction of European land management and more recently because of climate change driving dramatic fluctuations in rainfall in northern Australia. We have multiple projects running to (i) monitoring Bogong moths in their summer (Alps) range, and (ii) mapping the winter breeding range of the species so that conservation actions can be targeted.
- Data and modelling to inform a renewable energy transition that benefits, and does not destroy nature. We're working with energy grid engineers and combining mapping of biodiversity and conservation prioritisation modelling methods to identify the best and worst places for energy grid and energy generation (solar and wind) projects.
Professor Emily Nicholson
I am a conservation scientist interested in include biodiversity monitoring and risk assessment, conservation decision-making, and ecosystem science. I am particularly interested in research wtih impacts on conservation policy and practice at global and local levels. I co-lead the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems thematic group in IUCN's Commission on Ecosystem Management, and work with the UN Convention on Biological Diversity on biodiversity indicators, and UN Statistics Division on ecosystem accounting.
Project topics:
- The Red List of Ecosystems, its application in diverse ecosystems, and its use globally as a headline indicator for the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
- New methods for ecosystem-approaches to private sector assessments of impacts and dependencies on nature (e.g. TNFD, nature positive), including restoration and threat-mitigation.
- Evaluating biodiversity indicators for the U Convention on Biological Diversity, largely with model-based approaches.
- Indicators of ecosystem integrity and degradation, and how they can ge genrealised across groups of similar ecosystems to facilitate national and global ecosystem assessments.
Dr Emma Hudgins
I'm interested in the ecology, impacts, and management of species that are changing their distributions due to humans. I work on the optimization of management and surveillance for species with dynamic ranges, including for invasive pests and trees undergoing climate-induced range shifts.
Project topics:
- Cooperative management of invasive species spread: we are building optimisation models that borrow from Game Theory to determine the optimal arrangement of pest management efforts and the optimal transfer of funds from one province to another that leads to a win-win for both provinces.
- Optimal spread control of Australian forest pests: I’m interested in seeing whether there could be general spatial patterns in optimal management across species that can be used in situations with poor data or novel invaders. Are the same types of management actions always selected with the same spatial arrangement? Do pest species traits predict the style of management that is chosen?
- Urban tree 'firebreaks' for the City of Melbourne: the City of Melbourne’s urban tree inventory will be overlaid with pest and weed survey data, which will be fed into models to forecast future threat scenarios. This will allow the city to plan strategic removals of trees that act as links to accelerate the spread of new invaders.
Professor Michael McCarthy
I work across a range of areas in quantitative ecology. My main research interests are imperfect detection in ecological surveys and how to account for it, modelling the response of species to disturbance regimes (e.g., fires) and how to manage that in the face of uncertainty, and using a ciliate microcosm system to evaluate ecological models.
Project topics:
- Developing and evaluating models of imperfect detection.
- Modelling the relationship between pyrodiversity and biodiversity.
- Evaluating ecological models with microcosms.
Professor Peter Vesk
My research interests fall into two fields: (a) the analysis of plant functional traits and types and their generality and (b) predicting, planning and measuring the outcomes of vegetation conservation, management and landscape restoration. Most of the work includes developing and applying conceptual and quantitative ecological models appropriate to the problem at hand.
Project topics:
- Trait-based models for plant and vegetation response to environmental change.
- Native vegetation management and monitoring on Phillip Island.
Dr Jack Pascoe
My research focuses on applied ecological systems, and conservation land management through a combined lens of Indigenous knowledges and quantitative ecology. I have a particular interest in understanding and managing biocultural landscapes.
Project topics:
- Applied adaptive management - investigating how we can optimise our land management activities, including planned burning, forest thinning and vegetation management to balance risk, culture and biodiversity values.
- Bioclutral landscapes and culturally significant entities - focussing on how biocultural landscapes can be managed through the lens of understanding and prioritising culturally significant entities.
Dr David Wilkinson
I’m a quantitative ecologist interested in open science practices. My ecological research interests are methodological development, model comparisons and evaluation, imperfect detection, and real-world applications thereof. I’m also interested in improving how research is done: computational reproducibility, open software development, and appropriate reporting of statistics, code, and software.
Project topics:
- New developments and improvements for joint species distribution modelling.
- Computational reproductions of published ecological articles.
- Developing guidelines for researchers to improve how we report methodologies and adopt open science practices.
Dr Emily McColl-Gausden
I am interested in applying ecological modelling methods to different ecological questions, including imperfect detection and site occupancy-detection models, environmental DNA sampling and large-scale sampling projects.
Project topics:
- Mapping the winter distribution of the Bogong moth using environmental DNA.
- Using environmental DNA data to explore the relationship between habitat, drought and invasive fish with platypus occupancy.
Dr Natalie Briscoe
I’m interested in understanding the mechanisms that limit where species can persist, and how this knowledge can inform conservation decisions. A key focus of my research is developing and testing models for predicting the impacts of climate change on species. I use a combination of modelling, fieldwork and lab work.
Project topics:
- Developing mechanistic frameworks for identifying species vulnerability to climate change.
- Understanding patterns of intraspecific trait variation in climate-related traits and how these influence projected distribution limits.
- Testing process-explicit models of species range dynamics.
Dr Payal Bal
I am a quantitative and spatial ecologist interested in using modelling and data science approaches for conservation problems. I develop integrated modelling approaches to assess the impacts of economic processes on land use and biodiversity at national/global scales. I work with spatial datasets, biodiversity data repositories and R to develop open-source code for my analyses.
Project topics:
- Big data in ecology to address land-scape conservation questions.
- Conceptualising model integration in biodiversity assessments.
- Applying data and modelling solutions for data-poor taxa.
Dr Billy Geary
I'm interested in using applied and quantitative approaches for better managing and conserving biodiversity in a time of global change. This spans topics including fire ecology, spatial conservation planning and prioritisation, ecological forecasting, invasive species management and ecosystem modelling. I work extensively across biodiversity policy and research.
Project topics:
- Managing biodiversity during global change - how will biodiversity be impacted by future global change and interacting threatening processes, such as changing fire regimes, invasive species and climate change, and how can we manage these impacts?
- Quantifying the impacts of businesses on biodiversity - businesses and institutions have impacts on biodiversity through their economic activity and consumption of resources. How can we accurately quantify this and manage it?
- Developing biodiversity decision-support tools - how can we produce useful and actionable models and tools that can be used to make good decisions for biodiversity?
Dr Julianna Santos
I'm a conservation biologist studying biodiversity responses to global change to inform conservation policy and management at local and global scales. My research spans all levels of biodiversity, from genes to ecosystems. I focus on developing indicators to quantify fire-driven changes in ecosystem integrity and tipping points for natural ecosystems.
Project topics:
- Developing Fire Indicators for Assessing Ecosystem Risk using the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems framework.
- Ecosystems in the Global Biodiversity Framework.
- Understanding mechanisms through which fire regimes affect biota.
- How pyrodiversity influences animal genetic diversity.