Dr. Kirsten Parris
Australian Research Council Post-doctoral Fellow
Australian Research Centre for Urban Ecology (ARCUE) and
School of Botany, The University of Melbourne

Biography
Dr Parris is an Australian Research Council Post-doctoral Fellow at ARCUE and the School of Botany, University of Melbourne. She received her Ph.D. from The Australian National University in Canberra, where she studied the ecology of stream-breeding frogs in the forests of sub-tropical eastern Australia. Following her Ph.D., Dr. Parris worked as a Post-doctoral researcher at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, University of California Santa Barbara, before joining ARCUE as its first Post-doctoral Fellow in 2000. For the past three years, she has been assessing the effects of habitat fragmentation and habitat quality on the persistence of pond-breeding frogs in greater Melbourne. Her ARC project is focussed on the impacts of roads, including traffic noise and vibration, on the acoustic communication and community composition of birds and frogs.

Dr Parris' research interests include the ecology and conservation biology of amphibians; the response of populations, species and communities to human disturbance; the ecology of urban systems; road ecology; bio-acoustics and animal communication; field survey methods; and macroecology. She has 14 refereed publications (listed here).

Selected Publications
Parris, K. M. 2002. More bang for your buck: The effect of caller position, habitat and chorus noise on the efficiency of calling in the spring peeper. Ecological Modelling 156: 213-224.

Parris, K. M. 2001. Distribution, habitat requirements and conservation of the cascade treefrog Litoria pearsoniana (Anura: Hylidae). Biological Conservation 99: 285-292.

Parris, K. M. and McCarthy, M. A. 2001. Identifying effects of toe clipping on anuran return rates: the importance of statistical power. Amphibia-Reptilia 22: 275-289.

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