Funded! "Amphibians of the World Heritage-listed Gondwana Rainforests: Distribution, habitat us

I'm part of a team (including Guy Castley, Hamish McCallum, Harry Hines, myself, Thais Sasso Lopes and Dave Newell) to have just been awarded $14,770 through the competitive Griffith University School of Environment and Science Research Support Scheme for the project: "Amphibians of the World Heritage-listed Gondwana Rainforests: Distribution, habitat use,conservation status and potential threats"!

This project involves amphibians of the World Heritage-listed Gondwana Rainforests of southeast Queensland and northeast New South Wales. It aims to examine the current fine-scale distribution, habitat drivers and climate/weather sensitivity of several of these amphibian species by performing site occupancy surveys across both QLD and NSW, and comparing current with historical data.

The funding will support an Honours student project "Frogs – occupancy surveys, modelling and SDMs", a PhD student project (Thais Sasso Lopes) "Bringing together ecology and mathematical modelling to understand the recovery of amphibian populations following declines caused by the amphibian chytrid fungus" and up to three Special Research Project (3922ESC) students "Rainforest BioCondition Assessment" and "Rainforest stream habitat assessment". See our website for more details about opportunities.

I'm excited to get started on an important project that will provide a detailed assessment of the status of a number of important amphibian species within our local region, as well as an indication of their habitat needs, potential threats, and likely sensitivity to future climate change. We hope to use our findings to actively inform threatened species conservation policy.