Rodney van Der Ree

Rod's role is to co-ordinate and supervise the various sub-projects (i.e. postgraduate students). He is responsible for liaison with industry partners and the timely completion of the overall project.

Andrea Taylor

Andrea Taylor's role is in co-supervision of Honours and Graduate students on the project, and providing training in molecular genetic marker techniques and analysis. She advises on the integration of genetic and demographic data to maximise the utility of both in interpreting animals movements and population genetic structure

Paul Sunnucks

Paul's role in this project is to help guide and drive the application of molecular population biology approaches to understanding the demographics and dispersal of organisms through a disrupted landscape. An important aspect of this will be supervising Honours and PhD students. The Molecular Ecology laboratory provides facilities, training and the environment for developing techniques, acquiring data, conducting and interpreting analyses that reveal aspects of the
population biology of vertebrate and invertebrate animals. These data when combined with data from field ecology and demographic modelling, underpinned by evolutionary and population biology theory, will allow much fuller understanding on the impacts of human habitat alteration on
the likely future condition of populations of organisms.

Mike Harper

Mike Harper is a Research Assistant on the project. Mikes responsibilities include assisting students with fieldwork and data collection. Mike is also responsible for the web site.

Jodie Taylor

Jody (formerly Jody Simmons) began her Ph.D in May 2005. Jody aims to use both ecological and contemporary genetic techniques to; (1) assess the effects of different configurations of the landscape associated with roads (e.g. interconnected habitat blocks and unconnected habitat blocks compared with large blocks of natural habitat) on the mobility of model lizard species and the native cockroach Laxta granicollis; (2) quantify the extent to which major highways in regional Australia form a barrier to the movement of model lizard species and L. granicollis; (3) assess the effectiveness of existing structures and road designs that may potentially facilitate safe crossing, by measuring their rate of use, reduction in road kill and increase in population viability (in the third year); (4) obtain important data that will contribute to population viability models.

Silvana Cesarini

Silvana's PhD focuses on the barrier effect of roads on the squirrel glider, Petaurus norfolcensis, which is a marsupial species restricted to forest and woodland in eastern Australia. Since its primary form of movement is by gliding between trees, the gap in habitat connectivity created by major roads may influence both daily movements and dispersal, and could thus lead to population isolation, with resulting increase in risk of local extinction. I will investigate this issue via empirical techniques (trapping and radiotracking) and genotypic analysis. The latter will employ the use of microsatellite markers to determine the level of genetic structure and to characterise dispersal. The second aim of this project is to assess the effectiveness of mitigation structures and road designs at decreasing the risk of local extinction.

Chris Stewart

Chris's contribution to the roads project will be to examine the effects of roads on wildlife populations by using population modelling. He aims to incorporate genetic, life history and environmental events into his models. Field data from other researchers will be used to consolidate the models he builds.

Ashley Herrod

Ashley is interested in whether roads pose a barrier effect to the dispersal of Yellow-footed Antechinus to and from populations. Yellow-footed Antechinus are small carnivorous marsupials belonging to the same family as the better-known Tasmanian Devil and Quoll. During field trips to my study sites in Northern Victoria, Ashley traps antechinus to obtain DNA for genetic analyses that can reveal movement patterns of individuals between populations and confer dispersal events to quantify any barrier effect of the freeway. Ashleys' study will help build towards a better understanding of the effects of roads on small mammals. This will help in the conservation of remnant roadside habitat and may help guide future road development.