Research

Evolutionary and Ecological Physiology

I've worked on an eclectic range of research themes and biological systems to address various questions in ecology, evolution, and physiology. I used to think that this was going to be a disadvantage as I would be a jack-of-all-trades but master-of-none. However, diversity in knowledge, perspective, and skills valuable for collaborations and is what drives new ideas and interesting research.

My current major research projects are:

ATLS: Assessing Thermal Load Sensitivity in Australian Plants

This Australian Research Council funded Discovery Project aims to determine the sensitivity of a range of life stages for diverse Australian plants to the combined effects of intensity and duration of thermal stress.

Temperature is a major determinant of the distribution of species and yet the capacity to predict the thermal sensitivity of plants is extremely limited. This project aims to advance understanding of how heat tolerance varies across Australian native plants, over the life cycle, and how it scales to lifetime vulnerability to environmental stress in the context of extreme events and climate change.

Aims:

1) Explain variation in thermal load sensitivity across plant species from a range of ecoregions and growth forms and exploring differences in sensitivity across life stages (e.g. seeds, seedlings, adult leaves, gametes).

2) Determine the role of phenotypic plasticity in modifying responses to heat stress, including effects of priming and water availability sensitivity.

3) Understand and model the processes of accumulated damage and repair to function and survival probability under dynamic environmental conditions.

4) Apply demographic ecological modelling to integrate trait-based and life-stage differences in thermal sensitivity to estimate lifetime fitness and population changes over time.

In collaboration with Prof Adrienne Nicotra (ANU), A/Prof Danielle Way (ANU), A/Prof Andy Leigh (University of Technology Sydney), A/Prof Daniel Falster(UNSW), A/Prof Enrico Rezende (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile), Dr Lydia Guja (Australian National Botanic Gardens).

FutureClim: Responses of alpine communities to future climate change

This Australian Research Council funded Discovery Project aims to determine how communities of interacting alpine plants, soil invertebrates, fungi, and microbes can cope with or respond to novel climatic conditions.

Alpine regions are among the most vulnerable to climate change worldwide. Understanding the capacity for resilience and response to warming and drying conditions and more extreme events in these communities is a research priority. The Australian Mountain Research Facility (AMRF) have established field sites with monitoring and climate manipulation (active heating and rain exclusion) infrastructure in the Australian Alps. This exciting project will use a combination of field monitoring and manipulation approaches to develop an understanding of alpine biotic responses to drying, warming, and extreme events.

Questions: What is the relative importance of fundamental physiology, phenotypic plasticity, and interspecies feedbacks in determining climate change response at the community level?

What is the potential for resilience and contemporary evolutionary response of species within these communities?

Led by Prof Adrienne Nicotra (ANU), in collaboration with a network of researchers in the Australian Mountain Research Facility (AMRF), including Prof Saul Cunningham (ANU), Prof Justin Borevitz (ANU), A/Prof Susanna Venn (Deakin), Prof Celeste Linde (ANU), A/Prof Megan Head (ANU).