Graduate and Masters Students
Anwar is studying the distribution and ecology of Australian grasshoppers for his PhD. He is interested in understanding factors that underlie species distribution at different spatial scales. He is transcribing and geocoding field notebooks of the Australian orthopterist Ken H. L. Key and using them to in spatial analyses to understand their distributional patterns. He is also doing empirical work on grasshopper ecophysiology and habitat use to better understand their ecological requirements and to develop detection models.
Gordon Berg was the Victorian Plague Locust Commissioner when he worked for the Victorian Government. He is now doing a PhD on the ecology and phenology of the Australian Plague Locust, Chortoicetes terminifera. He is investigating what influences whether Australian plague locust outbreaks will, or will not, affect Victoria when source populations exist in other states.
Paritosh Bedekar is undertaking a Masters investigating polymorphism in social insects in relation to thermal physiology. He is applying biophysical models to understand the ecological and evolutionary significance of physiological polymorphism in ants.