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A collaboration with conservation scientists at UQ to create a data-driven web application for Australians to find the threatened species near them and learn how to take meaningful action. Threatened Australians is a collaboration between conservation scientists from University of Queensland Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science (CBCS), interaction design academics from Queensland University of Technology Design Lab and web developers from Wando Labs. It was born out of a recognition that Australian species are in a disastrous state and without better support, they will continue to decline. Australians and their elected representatives can provide that support by talking about it. If we talk about it, we can start to encourage those in power to do what they can to provide the necessary solutions. We felt the lack of a conversation around the Australian threatened species crisis was, in part, due to a lack of basic information at the fingertips of all Australians. This project is an attempt at providing an accessible and engaging resource that helps to communicate the ongoing crisis. How many people know about which species are endangered in their backyards? And why are they endangered? And if locals don’t know these facts, how can they possibly alert elected representatives when issues which affect the future of these species arise? This project is guided by two overarching principles: - Education. If people are aware of the size of the challenge and can articulate that which matters most to them, meaningful change is more likely to occur. The conservation community has developed impressive data about threatened species in Australia. Yet not enough people know about this important work. Through interaction design these data can become meaningful for all Australians. - Communication. There are many Australians who are concerned with the state of the environment. It should be easy for constituents

By-catch is the most significant direct threat marine megafauna face at the global scale. However, the magnitude and spatial patterns of megafauna by-catch are still poorly understood, especially in regions with very limited monitoring and expanding fisheries. The Indian Ocean is a globally important region for megafauna biodiversity and for tuna fisheries, but has limited by-catch data. Anecdotal and scattered information indicates high by-catch could be a major threat. Here, we adapt a Productivity Susceptibility Analysis tool designed for data-poor contexts to present the first spatially explicit estimates of by-catch risk of sea turtles, elasmobranchs, and cetaceans in the three major tuna fishing gears (purse seines, longlines, and drift gill nets). Our assessment highlights a potential opportunity for multi-taxa conservation benefits by concentrating management efforts in particular coastal regions. Most coastal waters in the northern Indian Ocean, including countries that have had a minimal engagement with regional management bodies, stand out as high risk for fisheries interactions. In addition to species known to occur in tuna gears, we find high vulnerability to multiple gear types for many poorly known elasmobranchs that do not fall under any existing conservation and management measures. Our results indicate that current by-catch mitigation measures, which focus on safe-release practices, are unlikely to adequately reduce the substantial cumulative fishing impacts on vulnerable species. Preventative solutions that reduce interactions with non-target species (such as closed areas or seasons, or modifications to gear and fishing tactics) are crucial for alleviating risks to megafauna from fisheries.

Australia—like much of the world—is facing a biodiversity crisis. Hundreds of species are in danger of extinction due to the destruction and degradation of their habitats. Populations of threatened species have more than halved since 1985. To have a chance at survival, these species require federal government recovery plans for funding and habitat protection. The site Threatened Australians began as a discussion between a conservation scientist and an interaction designer who distilled the problem: We, as a scientific community, know so much about threatened species, yet there is no simple way for laypeople to connect with them. The problem became a brief: There are so many government and scientific datasets about these species available. How might they be used to promote democratic action to save threatened species? A small budget was obtained through internal university funding based on a commitment to produce a website that took users through entering their postcode, to connecting in a meaningful way with local threatened species, to taking actions to help save them.

Many threats to biodiversity can be predicted and are well mapped but others are uncertain in their extent, impact on biodiversity, and ability for conservation efforts to address, making them more difficult to account for in spatial conservation planning efforts, and as a result, they are often ignored. Here, we use a spatial prioritisation analysis to evaluate the consequences of considering only relatively well-mapped threats to biodiversity and compare this with planning scenarios that also account for more uncertain threats (in this case mining and armed conflict) under different management strategies. We evaluate three management strategies to address these more uncertain threats: 1. to ignore them; 2. avoid them; or 3. specifically target actions towards them, first individually and then simultaneously to assess the impact of their inclusion in spatial prioritisations. We apply our approach to the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and identify priority areas for conserving biodiversity and carbon sequestration services. We found that a strategy that avoids addressing threats of mining and armed conflict more often misses important opportunities for biodiversity conservation, compared to a strategy that targets action towards areas under threat (assuming a biodiversity benefit is possible). We found that considering mining and armed conflict threats to biodiversity independently rather than simultaneously results in 13 800–14 800 km2 and 15 700–25 100 km2 of potential missed conservation opportunities when undertaking threat-avoiding and threat-targeting management strategies, respectively. Our analysis emphasises the importance of considering all threats that can be mapped in spatial conservation prioritisation.

Fisheries management has historically focused on the population elasticity of target fish based primarily on demographic modeling, with the key assumptions of stability in environmental conditions and static trophic relationships. The predictive capacity of this fisheries framework is poor, especially in closed systems where the benthic diversity and boundary effects are important and the stock levels are low. Here, we present a probabilistic model that couples key fish populations with a complex suite of trophic, environmental, and geomorphological factors. Using 41 years of observations we model the changes in eastern Baltic cod (Gadus morhua), herring (Clupea harengus), and Baltic sprat (Sprattus sprattus balticus) for the Baltic Sea within a Bayesian network. The model predictions are spatially explicit and show the changes of the central Baltic Sea from cod- to sprat-dominated ecology over the 41 years. This also highlights how the years 2004 to 2014 deviate in terms of the typical cod–environment relationship, with environmental factors such as salinity being less influential on cod population abundance than in previous periods. The role of macrozoobenthos abundance, biotopic rugosity, and flatfish biomass showed an increased influence in predicting cod biomass in the last decade of the study. Fisheries management that is able to accommodate shifting ecological and environmental conditions relevant to biotopic information will be more effective and realistic. Non-stationary modelling for all of the homogeneous biotope regions, while acknowledging that each has a specific ecology relevant to understanding the fish population dynamics, is essential for fisheries science and sustainable management of fish stocks.

The efficiency with which sorghum crops use intercepted radiation (RUE) affects their maximum productivity. RUE in turn, is affected by crop canopy characteristics, as well as leaf biochemical parameters determining maximum leaf photosynthetic rates. These traits are notoriously slow to measure and have previously not been amenable to selection in breeding programs. We used hyperspectral sensors attached to a tractor to estimate leaf and canopy traits associated with RUE in large sorghum field trials. Using Partial Least Square Regression we developed models to predict leaf biochemical photosynthetic parameters known to limit C4 photosynthesis, such as maximum Rubisco and PEP carboxylation rates (Vcmax and Vpmax, respectively) and maximum electron transport rate (Jmax) from the canopy hyperspectral reflectance. We also used various vegetation indices to predict canopy characteristics such as light interception and biomass which allowed us to calculate canopy radiation use efficiency for each trial plot. This is the first time that parameters related to photosynthetic efficiency in sorghum have been estimated for so many different genotypes, showing that significant and heritable variation exists. The predicted values were also used for Genome Wide Association studies to identify the genomic regions associated with canopy RUE and hence improved productivity. Sorghum being such a great genetic model, this may also help elucidate the genetic mechanisms underpinning photosynthetic efficiency and RUE in other cereals.

Species ranges are shifting in response to climate change, but most predictions disregard food-web interactions and, in particular, if and how such interactions change through time. Predator-prey interactions could speed up species range shifts through enemy release or create lags through biotic resistance. Here, we developed a spatially explicit model of interacting species, each with a thermal niche and embedded in a size-structured food-web across a temperature gradient that was then exposed to warming. We also created counterfactual single species models to contrast and highlight the effect of trophic interactions on range shifts. We found that dynamic trophic interactions hampered species range shifts across 450 simulated food-webs with up to 200 species each over 200 years of warming. All species experiencing dynamic trophic interactions shifted more slowly than single-species models would predict. In addition, the trailing edges of larger bodied species ranges shifted especially slowly because of ecological subsidies from small shifting prey. Trophic interactions also reduced the numbers of locally novel species, novel interactions and productive species, thus maintaining historical community compositions for longer. Current forecasts ignoring dynamic food-web interactions and allometry may overestimate species tendency to track climate change.

Area-based conservation measures, including protected areas (PA) and other effective area-based conservation measures (OECM), play an important role in biodiversity conservation. In the Brazilian Amazon, even though Conservation Units and Indigenous Lands have been shown to reduce deforestation, few studies have addressed Quilombola Territories, and none of the above-mentioned areas were evaluated according to their role in promoting native vegetation regrowth. Here, we used a matching analysis to show that Brazilian Amazon Indigenous Lands, Quilombola Territories, and two types of protected areas (Conservation Units of Restrict Use and Sustainable Use) contribute to reduced native vegetation conversion, when compared to their control areas. Indigenous Lands and Conservation Units of Restrict Use lost respectively 17 and five times less native vegetation cover than their unprotected control areas, between the years of 2005–2012. Similarly, Quilombola Territories had native vegetation loss rates 5.6 times lower than in matched controls. Importantly, our results demonstrate for the first time that between 2012 and 2017 Indigenous Lands and Quilombola Territories contributed two and three times more to native vegetation regrowth – a critical process for safeguarding biodiversity in many, if not all, parts of the world. Our results underscore the importance of areas beyond the formal protected areas system in conserving biodiversity and promoting forest regrowth.

The primary goal of this dissertation is to develop a methodological framework for identifying and interpreting evidence of developmental plasticity in the skeletal system. The Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) hypothesis posits that phenotypic-environmental interactions in early life modify morbidity and mortality risks throughout the lifespan. Biological systems exhibit varying degrees of plasticity throughout development and are responsive to environmental signals that provide essential information about present and future environmental challenges. Not all environmental signals are equally likely to impact development, and the timing, intensity, and duration of these signals may have significant implications for downstream phenotypic effects. Building on existing DOHaD approaches within skeletal biology, this dissertation uses the concept of sensitive developmental windows (SDWs) to link developmental stress embodied in the skeletal system with adult phenotypic outcomes related to growth and survivorship. By integrating theoretical concepts from developmental biology with methodological approaches from bioarchaeology, this dissertation represents a novel approach to exploring the relationship between stress and phenotypic variation in skeletal biology. It extends existing bioarchaeological approaches informed by DOHaD by 1) examining evidence of stress in skeletal elements that are sensitized to environmental feedback at different stages in the developmental lifecycle, and 2) correlating artifacts of developmental stress with downstream phenotypic outcomes and indicators of fitness. To test this approach, relationships between developmental stress, estimated stature and mortality risk were examined in the Turkey Creek Pueblo skeletal collection. The results of this dissertation suggest that in environments characterized by chronic stress, proximate signals of nutritional stress may have a stronger influence on growth potential than signals of ea

The widespread presence of plastic debris in the water column makes interactions between zooplankton and microplastics likely. However, the extent to which microplastics are ingested by and can impact zooplankton is uncertain, despite their important roles in biogeochemical cycling, climate regulation, and energy transfer. Here, we obtained spatially explicit estimates of the concentration and size distribution of plastic and live prey particles of 10-100 µm encountered by feeding zooplankton of 100-1000 µm. To estimate the concentration of plastics and prey, we used published power law particle size distributions and data compilations from marine plastics and phytoplankton globally. We found large spatial variability in plastics to phytoplankton ratios in typical zooplankton food size ranges, with peaks of 1:1x104 ratios in accumulation zones including the subtropical gyres and Mediterranean Seas, and very low ratios ranging from 1:1x109 to 1:1x1012 in the polar and subpolar areas. Methods used in this study will be used to explore how these ratios change for different sizes of zooplankton, to quantitatively assess carbon content ratios for different plastic particle shapes and to analyze sensitivities to size distribution slopes. Our analysis estimates global patterns in the ratio of exposure to microplastics and prey for a range of sizes of foraging zooplankton, providing an additional constraint for future analyses examining the organismal and ecosystem impacts of microplastic ingestion by zooplankton