Find an expert

Lily is a movement ecologist and Postdoctoral Research Fellow. She is interested in how and where highly mobile predators travel, what their journeys can teach us about their evolutionary histories, and how to translate research findings into effective conservation policies. At UQ, in affiliation with the Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science, she is currently working on using animal tracking data and network models to understand migratory connectivity in the oceans. She received her BSc (Hons) from the University of Queensland, studying the thermal physiology and behaviour of wild saltwater crocodiles. In her PhD, at the University of Cambridge, she investigated the foraging ecology of albatrosses and petrels across the Southern Ocean.

I am a comparative and environmental physiologist based at the University of Queensland. My research focuses primarily how the environment constrains the physiology of invertebrates, fish, amphibians and reptiles. I have a highly diverse research program that incorporates fundamental, curiosity-driven research and increasingly, a more applied research agenda in the emerging field of conservation physiology. Conservation physiology explores the responses of organisms to anthropogenic threats and attempts to determine the ecophysiological constraints dictated by current conditions and future environmental change. My research interests encompass the general areas of osmo- and ion-regulation, digestive and thermal physiology, environmental drivers of physiological function (specifically immune function and disease susceptibility) and animal performance in anthropogenically modified environments.

My lab investigates the physiological and behavioural responses of fish, frogs and reptiles to changing environmental conditions including assessing and predicting the impact of human-induced environmental change. A major thrust of this research is within the emerging field of Conservation Physiology. We are particularly interested in the capacity and plasticity of physiological systems (e.g. respiratory, cardiovascular, osmoregulatory, digestive and musculo-skeletal) to compensate and maintain performance under changing environmental conditions.

We combine lab-based experimental studies with fieldwork, and take an integrative approach that utilises ecological, behavioural, physiological and genomic methodologies. In the field we utilise remote sensing technology (acoustic and satellite telemetry, archival tags) to investigate the movement patterns and behaviours of animals in relation to environmental conditions.

Current projects include:

• assessing the effects of increasing temperatures on sharks, frogs, turtles and crocodiles;
• determining the physiological basis for the impact of increasing UV-B radiation on frogs;
• diving behaviour and physiology of freshwater turtles and crocodiles;
• acoustic and satellite tracking of sharks, turtles and crocodiles in Queensland;
• regulation of physiological function in aestivating frogs

Dr. Laura Grogan is a qualified veterinarian, Senior Lecturer in Wildlife Science, Chair of the Wildlife Disease Association Australasian section, and Leader of the Biodiversity Health Research Team (https://www.biodiversity-health.org/) - a collaborative multiple-university research group focused on finding sustainable solutions for the most challenging threatening processes currently affecting biodiversity.

Dr. Grogan has a background in research on wildlife diseases, ecology and conservation. She's particularly interested in investigating the dynamics, relative importance, and impacts of infectious diseases among other threats affecting wildlife across both individual and population scales, to improve conservation management. While she works across taxa and methodological approaches, her main study system currently involves the devastating amphibian fungal skin disease, chytridiomycosis, where at the individual scale she focuses on the pathogenesis and amphibian immune response to the disease, untangling the roles of resistance and tolerance in defense against infection. At the population and landscape scale she explores mechanisms underlying persistence in the face of endemic infection, focused on the endangered Fleay's barred frog. She also studies population and infection dynamics of chlamydiosis in koala using a mathematical modelling approach, exploring the relative benefits of different management approaches. In addition to working on amphibian and koala diseases, Laura is a keen birdwatcher, wildlife photographer and artist. She supervises projects across wildlife-related fields (predominantly vertebrates).

You can find out more about her research team here: www.biodiversity-health.org. Dr. Grogan has been awarded around $1.3 million in research funding since 2018. In late 2019 she was awarded an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA; DE200100490), worth $426,742. This project, titled "Understanding infection tolerance to improve management of wildlife disease", commenced in late 2020. Dr. Grogan was identified as one of the four top-ranked science DECRA awardees by the Australian Academy of Science’s 2020 J G Russell Award, and was also recipient of the highest award of the Wildlife Disease Association Australasia Section with their 2019 Barry L Munday Recognition Award.

PhD and Honours projects are now available in the following areas (plus many more areas - please get in touch if you have an idea):

• Can frogs be ‘vaccinated’ by antifungal treatment of active infections to develop protective immunity to the devastating chytrid fungus? (Principal Supervisor)
• Establishing the conservation status of south-east Queensland’s amphibians - occupancy surveys and species distribution models (Principal Supervisor)
• Tadpoles as a reservoir of the lethal frog chytrid fungal disease – measuring sublethal effects on growth, time to metamorphosis and ability to forage (mouthpart loss) (Principal Supervisor)
• Impacts of chytrid fungus on the survival of juvenile endangered Fleay’s barred frogs, Mixophyes fleayi, and importance for population recruitment (Principal Supervisor)
• Measuring the infection resistance versus tolerance of barred frogs to the devastating chytrid fungal disease to improve management outcomes (Principal Supervisor)
• Mapping the impacts of fire-fighting chemicals on endangered frog habitats (Co-Supervisor)
• Bowra birds: what do long-term monitoring data reveal about bird communities in the semi-arid region? (Co-Supervisor)
• Impacts of fire-fighting chemicals on endangered frogs: Implications for conservation and management (Co-Supervisor)

CURRENT POSITIONS

· Senior Staff Specialist (Public Health Medicine), Queensland Health

· Principal Research Fellow, Centre for Clinical Research - University of Queensland

RECENT POSITIONS

· General Practitioner, Indooroopilly General Practice

· Director, Queensland Centre for Intellectual and Developmental Disability (to January 2021)

· Senior Medical Officer, Mater Intellectual Disability and Autism Service (to November 2020)

· General Practitioner, Cornwall Street Medical Centre (to November 2020)

I have a strong interest in applied research, using information to improve policy. I have a broad interest in applying population genetics to the management of wild populations, particularly through a better understanding of dispersal.

April Reside is a lecturer in the School of the Environment and School of Agriculture and Food Sustainability, affiliated with the Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science.

Dr Reside's research encompasses ecology, conservation, and policy; investigating refuges and refugia; and recovery actions and their costs for Australia’s threatened species. April also works on conservation of woodland bird communities, the impact of climate change on biodiversity, and strategies for climate change adaptation. This work has involved applying conservation planning frameworks to identify spatial priorities for climate change adaptation for biodiversity and carbon sequestration.

April has a particular fascination of flying vertebrates, and has worked on bats on three continents and nine countries. She worked as a field ecologist for non-government organisations before her PhD on understanding potential impacts of climate change on Australian tropical savanna birds. She adapted species distribution modelling techniques to account for temporal and spatial variability in the distributions of highly vagile bird species. These dynamic species distribution models take into account species’ responses to fluctuations in weather and short-term climatic conditions rather than long-term climate averages. In her first postdoctoral position, Dr Reside modelled the distribution of c.1700 vertebrates across Australia at a fine resolution, and located the future location of suitable climate for all these species for each decade until 2085. From this, she identified hotspots across Australia where species were moving to in order to track their suitable climate, informing the IUCN SSC Guidelines for Assessing Species’ Vulnerability to Climate Change by the IUCN Species Survival Commission.

April has been involved in conservation of the Black-throated Finch for over 12 years, and is Chair of the Black-throated Finch Recovery Team. She has served on Birdlife Australia's Research and Conservation Committee and Threatened Species Committee; and the Science Committee for the Invasive Species Council.

Research interest: Monitoring ecosystem health of coral reefs and seagrass habitats, integrating field and remote sensing image datasets, and the developing applied cost-effective mapping and monitoring approaches. Developed approaches have been adopted as standard practice globally, making a difference in conservation of these valuable habitats. The long term monitoring studies at Heron and Moreton Bay formed the basis for the development of mapping and monitoring over time and space at local to global scale. See here major research impact

Major projects:

• Long term monitoring of benthic composition at Heron Reef (2002-ongoing).
• Long term monitoring of seagrass composition and abundance in Moreton bay Marine Park (2000-ongoing).
• Smart Sat CRC Hyperspectral Remote Sensing of Seagrass and Coral Reefs 2023-2027.
• Developement of Underwater Field Spectrometry and Benthic Photo Collection and Analysis
• 3D GBR Habitat Mapping Project 2015 - ongoing:
• Global habitat mapping project 2019-2023 Allen Coral Atlas .

Current position: Associate Professior in Marine Remote Sensing leading the Marine Ecosystem Monitoring Lab. . Academic Director Heron Island Research Station and affiliated researchers with Centre for Marine Science and Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science

Capacity Building and Citizen Science: Capacity: under/post graduate courses; Msc/PhD supervision, workshops/courses; Remote Sensing Educational Toolkit, and online courses (e.g. TNC).Strong supporter of citizen science based projects, as trainer, organiser and advisor for Reef Check Australia, CoralWatch, Great Reef Census and UniDive.