Integrative Ecology investigates the living environment. The Centre for Integrative Ecology (CIE) combines the study of ecology, evolution, and ecological physiology and research at the CIE falls into three overlapping focal areas:

• Environmental change has a direct impact on individual organisms, which is notably studied in the fields of sensory ecology and animal physiology.
• These responses lead to changes at the level of populations and communities.
• Environmental change, however, not only results in immediate responses but also imparts variation in selection pressures, ultimately leading to evolutionary change.

In conjunction with the CIE and REDI's Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Education (STEME) research focus group, we showcase five Deakin University researchers who are investigating the mechanisms of immediate and evolutionary response to environmental changes, not just what conditions endanger some species during change. A workshop for teachers will also be offered in the afternoon, to assist teachers to develop ecology-based activities for the classroom. A pre-event briefing will be held for teachers wishing to attend the classroom workshop.

Program

9.00 am Pre-event teacher briefing (optional)
9.40 am Morning tea
10.00 am Welcome to Symposium
10.10 am Mylene Mariette - Bird embryos prepare for hot weather by listening to their parents' calls
10.35 am John White - How will little critters cope with climate change?
11.00 am Marcel Klaasen - Arctic breeding shorebirds in times of change
11.25 am Break
11.40 am Sanja van Huet - Megafauna = Big animals
12.05 pm Don Driscoll - Feral horses in the Australian Alps
12.30 pm Panel discussion
1.00 pm Lunch break
1.45 pm Teacher workshop to design and develop classroom activities (optional)
4.00 pm Symposium close - please join us for refreshments

Speakers

Don Driscoll

Feral horses in the Australian Alps

New evidence of impacts by feral horses in Australia's alpine parks systems confirms they endanger threatened species and extensively damage critically endangered bog communities that could take millennia to recover. These impacts are not confounded by effects of deer, and accumulate over time, even when only a small number (~100) of feral horses are present. With protected areas representing only a small proportion of the area of the Australian states of New South Wales (9.3%) and Victoria (17%), allowing feral horses to degrade reserves is not a reasonable management compromise, is contrary to the purpose of the protected area system, and conflicts with international obligations.

John White

How will little critters cope with climate change? The Grampians long-term fire, climate and small mammal’s project.

Climate change models predict reduced rainfall, longer droughts, increased wildfires, punctuated by occasional flooding years. How will our biodiversity respond to such changes? Long-term research in the Grampians is providing us with a lens through which to look at what a climate change future may look like. Suffering extended droughts, increased major fire activity and the occasional flood, this landscape is mimicking the climate change predictions. Over 11 years of research we have shown small mammal diversity and distributions in the landscape are dramatically impacted by rainfall patterns. Booming after floods, but crashing massively during droughts, and then we have fires as well! Using trapping, motion sensed camera trapping and lots of modelling we have shown changes in numbers as well as started to understand where in the landscape species survive the droughts.

Marcel Klaassen

Arctic breeding shorebirds in times of change

An estimated 8 million Arctic breeding shorebirds across 50 species call Australia home during the non-breeding season. As true globetrotters they possibly experience the consequences of global change more than any other species group. These global changes include rapid climate warming in the Arctic and habitat destruction, pollution and exposure to novel diseases elsewhere along their flyways. Using banding, biometric, disease sampling and tracking data, we evaluate the potential threats that all these challenges pose to several key shorebird species. The results show that these changes indeed impact the shorebirds in a myriad of ways. For some species this leads to dramatic population declines, whereas others apparently manage to hang on, and partly as a result of rapid evolutionary change.

Sanja van Huet

Megafauna = Big Animals

The term megafauna literally means big animals. There are still many megafauna alive on earth today - but even more have lived and become extinct during prehistoric times. This talk will examine a particular group of megafauna that lived in Australia during a time period known as the Quaternary - approximately 1.2 million years ago to present. The talk will also examine reasons why these particular megafauna became extinct and draw comparisons to living megafauna survival.​

Mylene Mariette

Bird embryos prepare for hot weather by listening to their parents' calls

In many species, including birds and humans, embryos have long been known to listen to sounds around them before birth. Recently, we discovered that in the zebra finch, a small arid-adapted Australian bird, parents produce a special call when it is hot during incubation. Using playback to eggs in artificial incubators, we showed that embryos exposed to this "heat call" grew to a smaller size in hot nests after hatching, and then produced more offspring once adults. These findings suggest that this acoustically-tuned growth strategy is beneficial, and may represent a special adaptation for birds to prepare for unpredictable heat waves.