Brenton von Takach

Best student paper of 2024 winner Kate Rick, along with Brenton Von Takach and Kym Ottewell, discuss the use of genomics in Australian conservation efforts, and their study on the golden bandicoot

Find the episode wherever you usually get your podcasts.

🚨 New research out today from my PhD exploring population genetics of 3 lizard species across fragmented and continuous habitat.

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Coring a big beech tree

🌳🌳🌳 We have a new paper in @pnas.org showing climate warming leads to growth decline in beech because it drives trees to reproduce more frequently. Climate change can cause growth decline even when drought isn’t increasing by shifting where trees allocate resources doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2423181122

Long-term climatic stability drives accumulation and maintenance of divergent freshwater fish lineages in a temperate biodiversity hotspot - Heredity Heredity - Long-term climatic stability drives accumulation and maintenance of divergent freshwater fish lineages in a temperate biodiversity hotspot

The last paper from my PhD, on how historically stable climates have allowed divergent lineages of pygmy perches 🐟🧬(including cryptic species) to persist, was published this week in Heredity: www.nature.com/articles/s41.... Also includes some pretty bleak projections under climate change!

A scientist walking through clouds of genetic data

Check out our new article in Nature Ecology and Evolution rdcu.be/dISZk

After repurposing genetic and genomic data, we found several shortcomings with current archiving practices. In this paper we discuss file format standards, key metadata, and more, that could improve genetic data reuse-ability

How a long-lost fish species was brought back to Bendigo Reintroducing locally extinct species is a challenging affair, but with the right partnerships everyone can help make it happen.

Thrilled to share our research on a community-driven reintroduction of southern pygmy perch in @theconversation.bsky.social: a great example of how collaborations between government, community, managers and researchers can drive positive conservation outcomes!
theconversation.com/how-a-long-l...

First detection of rat poisons in wild amphibians...

authors.elsevier.com/a/1i-sK_17Gg...

Many Australian forests had open understoreys when British invaders first saw them, but our study shows that some like the tall Mountain Ash were dense and felt impenetrable to many.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

An adorable small marsupial with a stripe of black fur running from the top of the head down to the nose, it stands on a substrate of dry bark and leaves, facing the camera and poised as if to leap away from the photographer

We found a stripe-faced dunnart well outside of its known range in WA. Short paper here -->
www.publish.csiro.au/ZO/ZO23045. Photo by Josh Keen

If you know someone interested in reptiles - please let them know about this opportunity!

🎇Population Biology & Genomics at Curtin hosted the 'Cost and Feasibility of Eradication' workshop this week. Thanks presenters Dr Dave Ramsey, Dr Michael, Scroggie, Dr Dean Anderson, and thanks our attendees for participating!🎇@benflips.bsky.social @certhionyx.bsky.social @thescrogster.bsky.social

Figure from the paper showing a map of the City of Darebin, Victoria, Aus with different types of informal green space identified. Examples of the different types of informal green space are shown in thumbnail images around the map: brownfield sites, utility easements, street verges, railway sidings and vacant lots.

📢 New paper out!
Ever wondered what's going on with the random patch of grass behind your house?
Wanted to know how much vegetation is hiding beside railways?
Our method identifies & maps these informal green spaces!
🌿🗺️ 🌏🧪
#urban #urbanNature #urbanPlanning

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Cephalotus

Nepenthes

Pitcher plant traps have evolved at least six times, with two types found in Australia: the southwestern Cephalotus, which contains just a single species, and the tropical genus Nepenthes, which is represented by a few species (3000 km away!) in far north Queensland

📝 New quoll paper is out! 🧬
Declining populations of northern quolls will lose genetic diversity through time. If we strategically conserve at least eight populations across Australia, we can prevent the loss of > 90 % of that diversity!
doi.org/10.1016/j.bi...

I have a funded PhD project for someone!
It's a good mix of landscape ecology and biology with cool fieldwork, and will build skills in genomics and data analysis. Focal species are native and invasive invertebrates.
Please tell anyone who might be interested!
popbiolgenomics.org/opportunitie...

Collage of three photos. First is a night-time photo of me holding a quenda as part of a monitoring program. Second is a photo of me standing in front of a research poster entitled "Prioritising populations as sources for genetic mixing: guidelines from a simulation framework." Third is a selfie in front of a purple peacock mural for Wear It Purple Day.

First day of new role seems as good as any for a proper introduction, so here goes: I'm Sean, and I'm a lecturer in Molecular Ecology at Edith Cowan University! My research focuses on the application of genetics to conservation management, with a big focus on genetic rescue/mixing.

A cluster of bright red flowers at the tip of a shoot. The showy parts of the flowers are the stamens, so all together the cluster looks like a red shaving brush.

Pōhutukawa (Metrosideros excelsa, Myrtaceae) flowers around Christmas in Aotearoa (New Zealand). Pollinated by birds and bats, and enthusiastically visited by bees.

For 2024, I'm going to use this flow-chart to prioritise requests to review papers. At the end of the year I'll let you know the numbers in each category. I thought of adding an "am I being paid?" question, but what's the point?

The things we wished we had known Becoming a new professor is exciting. You are at last the captain of your own research. You pick who you want to work with, what you want t...

ecoevoevoeco.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-...

A blog post based on feedback from many new faculty o things we wished we had known when we started.

Monarch giant sequoia in Kings Canyon NP with burn scars and walk-thru catface scar

Historic Nelder Giant Sequoia Grove with 100% tree mortality from 2017 Railroad Fire. GS regen is minimal and in competition w/ ceanothus spp.

Red Mountain Giant Sequoia Grove in Kings Canyon NP experienced 100% tree mortality from 2021 KNP Complex

Giant Sequoia seedling recruitment post 2021 Windy Fire (Giant Sequoia National Monument).

Recent CA mega-fires killed ~15% of all monarch Giant Sequoias (>4ft diam). Monitoring GS ecosystems helps us to better understand how fire severity, intensity, scale, and our changing climate will affect the continued existence of these pre-historic beings. 🧵(1-4) briefly discusses GS & wildfire 🌎

art of a lightstand labeled Microwave going sideways to hit a man that says - the plate - and ignoring a man labeled The food

Infographic with statistics about the IPBES Invasive Alien Species Assessment: map showing the nationalities of the 285 contributing experts; 60 indigenous and local community participants from 20 countries; 86 authors; more than 100 reviewers and many more figures.

New paper building on the @ipbes.bsky.social #InvasiveAlienSpecies Report is now out on Springer Nature.

Discover more about biological invasions & the Report's findings:

link.springer.com/article/10.1... 🧪🌏

Full text access is available here: rdcu.be/dtcx4

Analysing spatiotemporal patterns of snake occurrence in an Australian city to help manage human-wil... Analysis of the spatial and temporal patterns of animal occurrence data can provide insight into the distribution, abundance, and dynamics of populations. Snakes may exhibit seasonal changes in their ...

🐍 📝 Check out our latest article on the snakes of Darwin, Northern Australia! Here we investigate the extent to which the colubrid and python species are observed in different environments at different times of the year!
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

save the date #ConservationGenetics 2024 conference in Lausanne/CH 28-30.8. - "How can research
support pragmatic conservation policies?" 🧬 🦤

Mark your calendars for this event! more details about the program and for registration will be circulated in early 2024.

Night-heron on the left?

Chemical recycling of plastic not so fantastic, report finds In today’s industrialized world, avoiding plastic is virtually impossible. Every trip to the grocery store likely means coming home with food and household items packaged in plastic bottles, tubs an...

A new report by International Pollutants Elimination Network and Beyond Plastics scrutinizes the chemical recycling industry that's on the rise in the U.S. and other parts of the world, including several European countries.

My latest for @mongabay.bsky.social

news.mongabay.com/2023/11/chem...

"eight square kilometres, or about three football fields a year, was being cleared". Not surprising that Alcoa is refuting those numbers...

We are hiring! Postdoc in population biology. In Western Australia. Starting next year. Applications close late December 2023: staff.curtin.edu.au/job-vacancie...

'Worst of the worst': Fire ant nests detected in NSW for the first time The NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI) have confirmed the detection of three red imported fire ant nests in South Murwillumbah in north-eastern NSW.

Not good. Fire ants detected in NSW for the first time #invasivespecies #biosecurity 🧪🌏 www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11...