Welcome! I’m an ecologist working with the Department of Planning and Environment, NSW Government.
Broadly, my research program aims to address current issues in applied ecology, and to create integrated systems for knowledge acquisition, retrieval, and application. My current work is focused on synthesising key fire response data and strategies to create risk-based models to assist with threatened species fire management.
I have spent the past 10 years conducting my own research and coordinating others in field and lab biology in both academic and government settings, domestically and internationally. In the past, my research was centred on exploring how positive interactions improve predictions of community diversity. This involved identifying the role of pollinators in mediating plant community coexistence in natural and agro-ecosystems, and investigating the impacts of land-use and climate change on pollination dynamics and the subsequent impacts that these may cause to ecosystem function. I have also conducted research into how the presence or absence of pollinating insects influence higher-order interactions in annual wildflower communities, using DNA metabarcoding techniques to advance our understanding of the complex networks of pollination interactions occurring across large-scale agricultural landscapes, as well as exploring the plasticity of functional traits associated with drought resistance in plants.
