August - 2016

New paper: "Rapid evolutionary response to a transmissible cancer in Tasmanian devils"

Exciting new paper out in Nature Communications today, on Tasmanian devil evolutionary response to devil facial tumour disease, co-authored by Hamish McCallum. Epstein, B., Jones, M., Hamede, R., Hendricks, S., McCallum, H., Murchison, E. P., Schonfeld, B., Wiench, C., Hohenlohe, P., and Storfer, A. (2016) Rapid evolutionary response to a transmissible cancer in Tasmanian devils. Nature Communications. 7:12684 | DOI: 10.1038/ncomms12684 (link). A link to paper at Nature Commu

Catch a rising star: Women in Science in Regional Queensland

Alison Peel was recently selected to participate in the "Catch a Rising Star: Women in Science in Regional Queensland" program, an Inspiring Australia initiative supported by the Australian Government as part of National Science Week (13 - 21 August in 2016). The program, co-organised by Dr Maggie Hardy (@DrMaggieHardy) and Dr Mathilde Desselle (@mathildesselle), aims to increase the visibility of women researchers in Queensland by connecting them with community groups and sc

New publication: What drives pulses of viral excretion in bats?

A new publication out today in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, led by Assistant Professor Raina Plowright (Montana State University), with Hamish McCallum, Alison Peel and others, outlines an agenda to disentangle the mechanisms driving pulses of viral excretion from bat populations. The figure on the right (source) illustrates within-host dynamics for three working hypotheses about the dynamics of emerging viruses within bats presented within our publication. Red pulses re

Two new publications on African fruit bats

Alison Peel has recently published of two recent papers on African fruit bats, as a follow-on from her PhD research at the University of Cambridge. Hayman, D. T. S., and A. J. Peel. 2016. Can survival analyses detect hunting pressure in a highly connected species? Lessons from straw-coloured fruit bats. 9 pp. Biological Conservation 200: 131–139. Peel, A. J., K. S. Baker, D. T. S. Hayman, R. Suu-Ire, A. C. Breed, G.-C. Gembu, T. Lembo, A. Fernández Loras, D. R. Sargan, A. R.