

New invited PNAS commentary! Lose biodiversity, gain disease
Prof. McCallum authors an excellent commentary about the recently published meta-analysis of the dilution effect by Civitello, et al (2015). The abstracts and links are below. McCallum, H. I. (2015) Lose biodiversity, gain disease. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, United States of America. 10.1073/pnas.1510607112 (link). Introductory paragraphs: There has been a vigorous and sometimes acerbic debate about the generality of the “dilution effect”: the notion tha


New Paper! Correlates of Recent Declines of Rodents in Northern and Southern Australia: Habitat Stru
An exciting new paper on native rodent declines, co-authored by Prof. McCallum is now available! The abstract and link are below. Lawes, M. J., Fisher, D. O., Johnson, C. N., Blomberg, S. P., Frank, A. S. K., Fritz, S. A., McCallum, H., VanDerWal, J., Abbott, B. N., Legge, S., Letnic, M., Thomas, C. R., Thurgate, N., Fisher, A., Gordon, I. J., and Kutt, A. (2015) Correlates of Recent Declines of Rodents in Northern and Southern Australia: Habitat Structure Is Critical. PLoS O


AAAS coverage of latest paper: "Tasmanian devils create landscape of fear"
Great coverage of Tracy Hollings' latest paper (Prof. McCallum as co-author) in Science (AAAS). Tasmanian devils—marsupial carnivores the size of a small dog—once actively preyed on possums on Tasmania and nearby islands. Now, the endangered devils are so rare that the tree-living possums frolic freely on the ground and venture into new areas, changing their role in the ecosystem, according to a new study. The finding boosts a hypothesis about how top predators transform the


New paper! Relaxation of risk-sensitive behaviour of prey following disease-induced decline of an ap
An exciting new predator-prey interaction response paper co-authored by Prof. McCallum is now available! The paper was from Tracey Hollings' PhD, supervised by Prof. McCallum. The abstract and link are below. Hollings, T., McCallum, H., Kreger, K., Mooney, N., Jones, M. (2015) Relaxation of risk-sensitive behaviour of prey following disease-induced decline of an apex predator, the Tasmanian devil. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 282:20150124 (link). A


Presentations at the Institute Retreat!
Yesterday we had our annual retreat for the Environmental Futures Research Institute (EFRI) - it was a huge success! Three of our team members gave excellent introductory presentations at the retreat 'featuring our research and profiling our experience and interests' - Drs. Konstans Wells, Douglas Kerlin and Laura Grogan (see photos below). It was an excellent opportunity to learn more about the underlying mechanics of the institute, find out about the research we each do, fi