School of Animal Biology
Futher Information
Other animal biology research areas
Understanding the complex web of ecological interactions among organisms is the key to maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in the face of global environmental change.
As ecologists, we study the interactions between organisms and their environments, from populations and communities to biogeochemical cycles and energy flow through food webs. We strive to quantify the patterns and processes that structure ecological systems, and understand the changing selective forces acting on organisms across a range of spatial and temporal scales. Our research addresses both fundamental and applied questions about the ecology of animals in natural habitats and in habitats that are increasingly affected by agricultural intensification and urban development.
Research areas
- Behavioural ecology
- Population ecology
- Species interaction networks and food-web ecology
- Insect ecology and management
- Community ecology
- Landscape ecology
- Restoration ecology
Behavioural ecology
In behavioural ecology we study the ecological and evolutionary basis for animal behaviour, and the importance of behaviour in enabling an animal to adapt to changing selective pressures from other organisms and from the environment.
Leaders
- W/Prof Leigh Simmons
- Assoc/Prof Joseph Tomkins
- Dr Boris Baer
- Assoc/Prof Jonathan Evans
- Assoc/Prof Christian Nansen
- Asst/Prof Nicola Mitchell
Population ecology
Population ecology deals with the demography and dynamics of populations (or spatially-disjunct meta-populations) of individuals, and seeks to understand the drivers of variation in population size and probability of persistence in space and time.
Population ecology is fundamental to the conservation management of threatened species, especially in the use of population viability analysis (PVA) to predict the long-term probability of population persistence in the face of threatening processes. Population ecology is also instrumental in managing crop pests, and managing the spread of invasive species.
Leaders
- Assoc/Prof Roberta Bencini
- Dr Brian Chambers
- Asst/Prof Harriet Mills
- Asst/Prof Nicola Mitchell
- Assoc/Prof Christian Nansen
- Prof Mike Johnson
- Dr Bob Black
- Dr Jane Prince
Species interaction networks and food-web ecology
All animals interact with other organisms in complex antagonistic (e.g. herbivore–plant) and mutualistic (e.g. plant-pollinator) networks. Much of ecology and conservation biology has tended to ignore, or simplify, this complexity down to single-species responses or pairwise interactions. However, we now recognise that there are important ‘emergent properties’ of interaction networks that must be understood in order to determine the functional consequences of biodiversity loss and its implications for food web energetics and the provision of ecosystem services in modified landscapes.
Leaders
Insect ecology and management
Insects, and other terrestrial and freshwater arthropods, make up the vast majority of the world’s biodiversity – an incredible five million species, or more! They also play crucial roles in food web interactions and ecosystem functioning, as herbivores, predators, parasites, pollinators and decomposers of plants and animals. These activities have brought insects into direct conflict with humans as the greatest threat to sustainable crop production, and the greatest risk to human health through insect-vectored diseases.
In insect ecology and management, we focus on the systematics, diversity and function of insects in natural and managed ecosystems, as well as on sustainable environmentally-friendly solutions to insect pest management problems. We also emphasise that the native terrestrial and freshwater invertebrates of Australia are grossly under-represented in conservation planning, and many species (particularly short-range endemics) are critically threatened by human disturbance.
Leaders
- Prof Raphael Didham
- Assoc/Prof Christian Nansen
- Adj/Prof Barbara York Main
- Adj/Prof James Ridsdill-Smith (CSIRO)
- Adj/Prof Mark Harvey (WA Museum)
Community ecology
Community ecology focuses on the relative importance of stochastic versus deterministic processes (such as environmental or competitive structuring forces) that drive the local assembly of a community of interacting organisms. Some branches of community ecology emphasise the causes and consequences of these local species interactions (e.g. predator-prey dynamics, and food-web ecology), while others emphasise the large-scale ‘emergent properties’ of ecological systems that produce characteristic patterning in distributional range, species richness, food web structure and ecosystem dynamics across large spatial and temporal scales (e.g. macroecology).
Leaders
Landscape ecology
Landscape ecology focuses on the geospatial patterning of biotic and abiotic variables, and the way(s) in which this patterning influences ecological processes across a mosaic of natural and managed land-use types. Landscape ecology (and in particular the sub-discipline of habitat fragmentation) traditionally focused on habitat patch dynamics alone, but it is now realised that we must consider the interactions that occur between processes operating in both the habitat patch and the surrounding land-use matrix if we are to conserve remnant populations. In an applied context, we are also interested in how the spatial distribution of remnant natural habitats influences agricultural production and human welfare, addressing ways in which we can maximise land-use productivity while minimising biodiversity loss.
Leaders
Restoration ecology
Many landscapes that have already been degraded by human activities are capable of being restored. Restoration ecology is a rapidly growing discipline, particularly in agricultural and urban landscapes where increasing value is placed on small remnants of native vegetation that provide a refuge for threatened species. Restoring and maintaining such habitats is a challenge for land managers, and requires detailed ecological understanding of the processes driving community assembly and population persistence. At present, most effort has gone into approaches to restoring vegetation cover back onto degraded land, and little emphasis has been placed on how to restore vertebrate or invertebrate communities, let alone a ‘natural’ semblance of ecological interactions or ecosystem functioning.
Leaders