Quantitative and Applied Ecology

Environmental decision making, ecosystem management and conservation biology, as well as community and population ecology and ecophysiology.

Academic staff

The following staff are available to supervise honours and masters research in the field of quantitative and applied ecology.

Dr Natalie Briscoe

Research into ecology and global change biology, including climatic constraints and adaptation, species distribution modelling, ecophysiology, thermal ecology and conservation biology.

Email: nbriscoe@unimelb.edu.au

Dr David Duncan

Research into the integrity of native ecosystems in human dominated landscapes, involving plant reproductive biology, native vegetation management, ecological restoration, monitoring design and the evaluation of conservation interventions.

Email: david.duncan@unimelb.edu.au

Dr Jose Lahoz-Monfort

Research into ecological modelling, statistical ecology, conservation technology, species distribution modelling, wildlife monitoring and demography and population dynamics.

Email: jlahoz@unimelb.edu.au

Professor Michael McCarthy

Research into ecological modelling, environmental decisions, fire ecology and imperfect detection.

Email: mamcca@unimelb.edu.au

Dr Libby Rumpff

Research into management and monitoring of native vegetation, fire management and conservation of threatened species ad communities, with a focus on structured decision making, adaptive management, and expert elicitation.

Email: lrumpff@unimelb.edu.au

Dr Darren Southwell

Research on optimal monitoring, adaptive management, metapopulations, population dynamics, structured decision-making and ecological modelling.

Email: darren.southwell@unimelb.edu.au

Professor Peter Vesk

Research into ecology, conservation and management; plants and vegetation.

Project topics:

  • The use of plant functional traits to organise, analyse and model plant species response to environment and disturbance
  • Applied plant and vegetation ecology for conservation and management.

Email: pvesk@unimelb.edu.au

Dr Bonnie Wintle

Research into conservation ecology, including meta-science ("the science of science"), reliability and generalisability of research, judgement and decision making and expert elicitation, as well as environmental science (biosecurity and risk assessment) and plant ecology.

Email: bonnie.wintle@unimelb.edu.au

Professor Brendan Wintle

Research into conservation and ecology.

Email: brendanw@unimelb.edu.au