Find out about our latest news and events.

News

Wednesday, 19 Oct 2022

Helen Osmond has watched the ins and outs of one superb fairy-wren population for three decades.

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Monday, 19 Sep 2022

Spring isn't all it's quacked up to be. Pollen levels are high, magpies are terrorising cyclists and pedestrians alike, and protective duck parents are in attack mode.

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Saturday, 03 Sep 2022

Our new research unites genomic sequencing and museum collections to reconstruct the evolutionary tale of native rodents, including many extinct and elusive species – and they have a fascinating origin story.

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Thursday, 01 Sep 2022

If swooping season strikes fear into your heart, you're not alone. Fortunately, Dr Chaminda Ratnayake from the ANU Research School of Biology has the intel you need to navigate the great outdoors this spring.

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Magpie-lark pair duetting. Image: Pawel Rek
Thursday, 14 Jul 2022

A new study shows Australian magpie-larks may use a ventriloquial illusion to make their vocal duets more threatening.

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Friday, 27 May 2022

The raw material for evolution is much more abundant in wild animals than we previously believed, according to new research.

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Events

Chun-Chieh Liao
5 Dec 2025 | 3 - 4pm

In this talk, I introduce how white-winged choughs, highly social cooperative breeders, integrate multiple features of alarm and contact communication to coordinate antipredator behaviour and maintain cohesion.

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Dalton Leibold
28 Nov 2025 | 1 - 2pm

Developmental conditions are powerful drivers of phenotypic plasticity. Environmental factors, such as temperature, can directly program fitness-associated phenotypes, while maternal effects act as indirect cues that shape the developmental environment.

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Josef Garen
30 Oct 2025 | 1 - 2pm

Using Eucalypts representing widely contrasting range sizes and home climates across Australia, I explore whether greater geographic distribution size or climate of origin are associated with the ability of these plants to acclimate their photosynthetic and respiratory apparatus or heat tolerance thresholds.

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Image supplied by Dr Dan Warren, CSU
16 Oct 2025 | 2:30 - 3:30pm

Species distribution models (SDMs) are widely used across fields as diverse as ecology, archaeology, epidemiology, and conservation biology.

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Image supplied by Ryan O'Donnell
11 Sep 2025 | 3 - 4pm

The majority of studies into the Australian orchid flora and associated funga have thus far been narrow in scope and focused either on a macro- or microevolutionary scale. In this thesis, I studied the Australian terrestrial orchid flora and its associated funga as a unified system spanning from the macro to microevolutionary scale.

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Distinguished Prof Natalia Dudareva, Purdue University
11 Aug 2025 | 1 - 2pm

Plants synthesize an amazing diversity of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that facilitate interactions with their environment, ranging from attracting pollinators and seed dispersers to protecting themselves from pathogens, parasites, and herbivores.

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