Current projects
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I work within the Fire Ecology & Biodiversity Group at the University of Melbourne’s Creswick campus, and am currently coordinating the Fire & Fragmentation Project and an associated project in the Mount Lofty Ranges. I'm interested in all things relating to animal responses to landscape structure and change, and I'm keen to better understand how past disturbances and habitat permeability are reflected in genetic diversity.
Until recently most of my ecological life was focused in the Otways and Central Highlands as part of the Fire, Landscape Pattern and Biodiversity Project and Fire in Wet Forests Project, respectively. Much as I enjoy leeches and climbing over large piles of logs, I've recently dragged myself to the fragmented stringybark woodland of western Victoria and eastern South Australia. We're still in the honeymoon period of the Fire & Fragmentation Project; the leeches are (almost) non-existent, the logs are dainty, the roads don't even look perilous in wet weather. There are various student project and volunteer opportunities available in this rosy, undulating land. We're particularly keen to recruit a Honours or Masters students in mid 2018 or early 2019. Please find more information here. 
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This is the southern water skink. Over the next 4 years, we hope to work out why it (and other species) crossed the paddock, and whether fire is a help or a hindrance to population connectivity in fragmented landscapes.
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