Researcher biography

I am principally a Terrestrial Ecologist, but I work in disparate fields of Biology. I am also a Historian, having published on old sailing ships and scientific expeditions. For many years I have been working on the history of the Macleay Museum, primarily on its natural history collections and principally on its 10,000 birds. Most of these collections were made in the 1870s, including 1000+ along the Queensland coast and into New Guinea.

My research at The University of Queensland includes: owls of Brisbane and its hinterlands; aggression between honeyeaters—from all over the continent; and the study of woodland birds of south-western Australia—primarily their nesting ecology. This work examines factors affecting nesting outcomes for an assemblage of threatened woodland birds. I am also the Perspectives Editor at Pacific Conservation Biology, where I supervise papers from an extremely diverse academic assemblage, including lawyers, philosophers, biologists (all sorts), physicists and linguists. I am currently a member of Hugh Possingham’s Lab.