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Cleaning up the rubbish: Australian megafauna extinctions
A few weeks ago I wrote a post about how to run the perfect scientific workshop, which most of you thought was a good set of tips (bizarrely, one person was quite upset with the message; I saved him...
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50/500 or 100/1000 debate not about time frame
As you might recall, Dick Frankham, Barry Brook and I recently wrote a review in Biological Conservation challenging the status quo regarding the famous 50/500 ‘rule’ in conservation management...
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Western Australia’s moronic shark cull
A major media release today coordinated by Jessica Meeuwig in Western Australia makes the (obvious) point that there’s no biological justification to cull sharks. – 301 Australian and International...
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Avoiding genetic rescue not justified on genetic grounds
I had the pleasure today of reading a new paper by one of the greatest living conservation geneticists, Dick Frankham. As some of CB readers might remember, I’ve also published some papers with Dick...
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Ice Age? No. Abrupt warmings and hunting together polished off Holarctic...
Did ice ages cause the Pleistocene megafauna to go extinct? Contrary to popular opinion, no, they didn’t. But climate change did have something to do with them, only it was global warming events...
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Outright bans of trophy hunting could do more harm than good
In July 2015 an American dentist shot and killed a male lion called ‘Cecil’ with a hunting bow and arrow, an act that sparked a storm of social media outrage. Cecil was a favourite of tourists visiting...
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Job: Research Fellow in Palaeo-Ecological Modelling
I have another postdoctoral fellowship to advertise! All the details you need for applying are below. — KEY PURPOSE Scientific data such as fossil and archaeological records used as proxy to...
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Two new postdoctoral positions in ecological network & vegetation modelling...
— With the official start of the new ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH) in July, I am pleased to announce two new CABAH-funded postdoctoral positions (a.k.a....
View ArticleWhy populations can’t be saved by a single breeding pair
I published this last week on The Conversation, and now reproducing it here for CB.com readers. — Two days ago, the last male northern white rhino (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) died. His passing...
View ArticleFirst Australians arrived in large groups using complex technologies
One of the most ancient peopling events of the great diaspora of anatomically modern humans out of Africa more than 50,000 years ago — human arrival in the great continent of Sahul (New Guinea,...
View ArticleSoftware tools for conservation biologists
Given the popularity of certain prescriptive posts on ConservationBytes.com, I thought it prudent to compile a list of software that my lab and I have found particularly useful over the years. This...
View ArticleBiogeography comes of age
This week has been all about biogeography for me. While I wouldn’t call myself a ‘biogeographer’, I certainly do apply a lot of the discipline’s techniques. This week I’m attending the 2013 Association...
View ArticleToo small to avoid catastrophic biodiversity meltdown
One of the perennial and probably most controversial topics in conservation ecology is when is something “too small’. By ‘something’ I mean many things, including population abundance and patch size....
View ArticleNeed to predict population trends, but can’t code? No problem
Yes, yes. I know. Another R Shiny app. However, this time I’ve strayed from my recent bibliometric musings and developed something that’s more compatible with the core of my main research and...
View ArticleThe biggest and slowest don’t always bite it first
For many years I’ve been interested in modelling the extinction dynamics of megafauna. Apart from co-authoring a few demographically simplified (or largely demographically free) models about how...
View Article… some (models) are useful
As someone who writes a lot of models — many for applied questions in conservation management (e.g., harvest quotas, eradication targets, minimum viable population sizes, etc.), and supervises people...
View ArticleCan we resurrect the thylacine? Maybe, but it won’t help the global...
(published first on The Conversation) Last week, researchers at the University of Melbourne announced that thylacines or Tasmanian tigers, the Australian marsupial predators extinct since the 1930s,...
View ArticleInterrupted flows in the Murray River endanger frogs
Flooding in the Murray-Darling Basin is creating ideal breeding conditions for many native species that have evolved to take advantage of temporary flood conditions. Led by PhD candidate Rupert...
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