Researcher biography
Lauren completed a Bachelor of Environmental Science and Management through Charles Sturt University in 2021. While completing her undergraduate studies and working as a bushland parks ranger, Lauren developed an interest in how threatened species recovery could be better integrated into policy and planning frameworks to provide stronger protection for threatened species habitat.
Lauren’s PhD project, supervised by Dr. April Reside, Dr. Annabel Smith and Dr. Lee McMichael, seeks to identify critical winter foraging habitat for the grey-headed flying fox across Queensland, with the goal of informing future conservation policy and planning. Lauren’s project will also examine the diet of grey-headed flying fox within the Toowoomba region and how both diet and roost occupancy change over time in response to environmental variables. Using a six-year dataset from the National Flying Fox Monitoring Program, Lauren will create spatially and temporally explicit models to investigate if weather patterns can be used to predict flying fox roost occupation across Queensland. By examining the relationship between roost occupancy, antecedent rainfall and temperature, Lauren hopes to determine if weather patterns can be used to forecast mass movement of flying foxes. If we can better predict mass movement of flying foxes, we can implement proactive management strategies to mitigate human-wildlife conflict and ensure the persistence of these important pollinators and seed dispersers.
Lauren’s research project is supported by the Holsworth Wildlife Research Endowment and the Ecological Society of Australia.