An ecologist by training – I hold a B.Sc. (Hons) in Marine Ecology from the University of North Carolina, Wilmington and a Ph.D. in Ecological Modelling from Griffith University. I am broadly interested in exploring new ways to (1) understand how natural communities are formed and (2) predict how they will change over time. As an Amplify Fellow at UQ, my current research focuses on developing computational tools and adapting techniques from epidemiology and statistical forecasting to study how organisms and ecosystems respond to environmental change. This work is being applied to investigate natural dynamics for a range of natural systems including host-parasite interactions, wildlife populations and veterinary diseases.
I am an active member of the R community and have written and/or maintain several popular R packages. For example, I’m a lead developer on the MRFcov package for multivariate conditional random fields analyses. I also wrote the mvgam R package for fitting dynamic Generalised Additive Models to analyse and forecast multivariate ecological time series, and I regularly provide training seminars and workshops to help researchers learn techniques in ecological data analysis.
I am currently seeking Honours and PhD candidates with interests and/or skills in veterinary epidemiology, spatial / spatiotemporal modeling and quantitative ecology.
Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Availability:
Available for supervision
Paul Dennis leads an exciting research group that applies cutting-edge technologies to understand the roles of microorganisms and their responses to environmental change.
He is also a passionate educator and public speaker who advocates for the importance of biological diversity and evidence-based environmental awareness. He has talked about his research on ABC Radio and a range of other media outlets.
His teaching covers aspects of ecology, microbiology, plant and soil science, and climatology. He considers these topics to be of fundamental importance for the development of more sustainable societies and takes pride in helping others to obtain the knowledge and skills they need to build a better future.
Paul's research has taken him to Antarctica, the Amazon Rainforest, high mountains and oceans. The approaches used in his lab draw on a wide range of expertise in molecular biology, ecology, statistics, computer science, advanced imaging and soil science. He applies these skills to a wide-range of topics and systems including plant-microbe interactions, Antarctic marine and terrestrial ecology, biogeography, pollution and human health.
Andrew is a population biologist in the School of Biological Sciences. A broad goal of his research is to understand the effect of environmental variability on the stability of ecological communities. At the same time, in order to deliver on this broader goal, he is working to scale up understanding from simple tractable systems to the more complex dynamics of real world-systems.
Before joining UQ, he was a Marie Curie fellow working with Jonathan Levine and Alex Hall at ETH Zurich (2018-2020), a postdoctoral fellow in Daniel Stouffer's lab at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand (2017-2018), and a CEHG (Centre for Computational, Evolutionary and Human Genomics) postdoctoral fellow in Tad Fukami's lab at Stanford University, USA (2015-2017). He did his PhD (2011-2015) with David Keith in the Centre for Ecosystem Science at UNSW Australia.
Sreekar’s research focuses on using ecological theory to inform conservation decision making. He is interested in a broad range of topics, including spatial conservation planning, evidence-based conservation policy, community assembly rules, extinction synergies, and land-use management. A big question that drives his research is how to address the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss. His current research is centred around studying the environmental risks associated with mining and mineral processing.
He serves as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Applied Ecology and has spent the past 15 years at universities across Australia, China, Czechia, India and Singapore. Sreekar is an avid birder and enjoys this aspect of his work both professionally and recreationally.
RESEARCH INTERESTS Fire Ecology, Ecological Genomics, Wildlife Ecology, Conservation Biology, Invasive Plants
My research group studies fire ecology and conservation biology. Currently, we are working on:
Managing interactions between changing fire regimes and invasive plants
Influence of changing fire regimes on plant-animal interactions
Restoration of native grassland
Biodiversity in agricultural landscapes
Platypus distribution & conservation
We have a special interest in plants and animals living in fire-prone areas because of the fascinating fact that these ecosystems are never static but continually re-shaped by cycles of fire and regeneration. While being grounded in fundamental biology and ecological theory, our research is always aimed at improving knowledge for biodiversity conservation. Our work has applications in fire management, biological invasion and threatened species conservation.
TECHNICAL APPROACHES: POPULATION GENETICS | SPATIAL LANDSCAPE GENETICS | DEMOGRAPHIC SIMULATION MODELLING | STATISTICAL MODELLING OF POPULATIONS & COMMUNITIES | BIOINFORMATICS | SPATIAL ANALYSIS IN R | We also know how to drop a hand-made 1 x 1 m polypipe quadrat on the ground and do good old-fashioned field work.
TEACHING: I teach ecology and wildlife science. At UQ I have coordinated and taught AGRC1032 Elements of Ecology and ANIM3018 Wildlife Technology for four years, among other teaching duties.
EDITORIAL I am Associate Editor for Wildlife Letters (2023–)
I was Associate Editor for Journal of Applied Ecology for four years (2018–2022).
CURRICULUM VITAE
2019 – current Lecturer, University of Queensland
2018 – 2022 Associate Editor, Journal of Applied Ecology
2018 – 2019 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow, Trinity College Dublin
2016 – 2017 Post-doctoral Research Fellow, Trinity College Dublin
2015 – 2016 Post-doctoral Research Assistant, University of Melbourne
