UTAS School of Biological Sciences in Sandy Bay, Tasmania, Australia | Campus building

UTAS School of Biological Sciences

Locality: Sandy Bay, Tasmania, Australia

Phone: +61 3 6226 2603

Address: Life Sciences Building, College Rd 7001 Sandy Bay, TAS, Australia

Website: http://utas.edu.au

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25.01.2022 Congratulations to Dr. Emily J. Flies of the DEEP Lab for being named the "Tasmanian STEM Communicator of the Year" by the Government of Tasmania (shown here accepting the award with her 3 month old in a front pack)! And well done to all University of Tasmania finalists and winners for this year's #STEM Excellence awards! #womenofSTEM! http://www.premier.tas.gov.au//recognising_excellence_in_s

25.01.2022 Check out this new #Ecology paper by Jessie Buettel and Barry Brook of the @D.E.E.P. Lab which resulted from a collaboration between ecologists and astrophysicists, using linear algebra and dot products. They ask a deceptively simple (yet complex) question: do trees in a forest fall downhill (and if so, does steepness matter)? Find out the answer here: https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com//10.1/ecy.2215

21.01.2022 Check out this "interview with an ecologist" about our very own PhD student, David Hamilton! He sure makes it look like fun being an ecologist! https://rapidecology.com//ecologist-spotlight-david-hamil/

21.01.2022 Check out this exciting new paper in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment by Emily Johnston Flies of the DEEP lab. This paper suggests biodiverse green spaces could help reduce autoimmune and allergic diseases in urban areas. How? Read the paper and find out! http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/fee.1630/abstract University of Tasmania

19.01.2022 Sue Baker and Alastair Richardson from UTAS School of Biological Sciences joined Andrew Hughes from the Bookend Trust for a day in wet forest with the Eco Leaders from Windermere Primary School. These kids are among thousands around Australia who are participating in the Expedition Class Tree House Challenge https://expeditionclass.com/contentPage.php?id=19. We had great fun exploring the forest, finding all sorts of invertebrates, fungi, mosses, lichens, filmy ferns and slime mould (and big trees of course). Alastair even found a freshwater crayfish in the Arve River. Some kids said afterwards that it was the best day of their life! Future ecologists perhaps?

19.01.2022 Ever wondered how the spatial scale of your analysis impacts the conclusions of your study? In this just-published paper, Emily Johnston Flies of the DEEP Research Group at UTas University of Tasmania and Iain Koolhof of UTAS School of Biological Sciences explore the socio-ecological drivers of Ross River virus infection at multiple spatial scales. Turns out, size (spatial scale) does matter! https://academic.oup.com//doi/10.1093/infdis/jix615/4693873

17.01.2022 Fantastic new paper just out in Evolution. This paper, headed by UTAS School of Biological Sciences PhD graduate Hannah MacGregor and SBS honours alumni Rachel Lewandowsky, examines the role that chemical secretions play in mediating patterns of hybridisation in the European Wall Lizard. In doing so, the results provide significant insights into the long standing debate on the function of chemical secretions as sexual signals. Read all about it below! http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/evo.13317/full MacGregor, H.E.A., Lewandowsky, R.A.M., D’Ettore, P., Leroy, C., While, G.M. and Uller, T. (2017) Chemical communication, sexual selection and introgression in wall lizards. Evolution. In press.

16.01.2022 You may have heard of the Cordyceps fungus that turns insects into "zombies", well apparently there's a virus that can do it too! http://www.lancswt.org.uk//zombie-caterpillars-death-march

14.01.2022 Check out this new paper from the BEER Group UTAS headed up by Ben Halliwell and published in the journal Nature Communications! Using a phylogenetic comparative analysis of over 1000 species, the authors show that the evolution of social grouping across lizards and snakes is overwhelmingly associated with live birth. Furthermore, that live birth has promoted transitions to more stable forms of family living comparable to that seen in mammals and birds!

10.01.2022 Ever wonder where trees come from? Check out this "curious kids" section from Prof Greg Jordan in today's The Conversation! https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-where-did-trees-co

10.01.2022 Congratulations to Emily Johnston Flies, postdoc extraordinaire here at UTAS School of Biological Sciences, for recently being awarded Thesis of the Year for her PhD (completed Dec 2016) through the Division of Health Sciences at the University of South Australia!

09.01.2022 Could Australia's Ross River virus be the next emerging infectious vector-borne disease? Find out in this #bioscience article by Emily Johnston Flies (from the DEEP Research Group at UTas) and Scott Carver. We love it when our female postdocs publish papers on #InternationalWomensDay! #womenofscience University of Tasmania @ https://academic.oup.com//d/10.1093/biosci/biy011/4913798

05.01.2022 Ever wonder what happens to echidnas in the winter... at the airport?! Check out this story by SNS researchers http://www.abc.net.au//offt/echidna-hobart-airport/9687154 Or, it's available via a podcast or the abc radio app and here too: http://www.abc.net.au//offt/echidna-hobart-airport/9687154

03.01.2022 More amazing science engagement by some wonderful Biological Science researchers during National Science Week. Well done, Catherine Hamilton and Tessa McSmith! Thanks for encouraging kids to learn about the incredible diversity of animals in Tasmania!

03.01.2022 UTAS School of Biological Sciences BEER Group (https://beergrouputas.wordpress.com/) is co-hosting the Australasian Evolution Society Meeting to be held in Hobart in December this year! They have a fantastic set of plenary speakers and a great new website so check it all out here - https://aesconference2017.wordpress.com! Registration is expected to open in the next few days or so. For more information on the Australian Evolution Society please check out their website here (http://ausevo.com/)

02.01.2022 Sue Baker from UTAS School of Biological Sciences is helping support a primary-school educational project, the Bookend Trust 'Tree House Challenge' https://expeditionclass.com/contentPage.php?id=19 Adventurer Andrew Hughes is spending the month sleeping high up in trees in three forest types: dry eucalypt forest, rainforest and wet eucalypt forest. During the day he abseils down to the ground to explore the forests and posts daily videos of what he finds. Sue helps answer questions that the students ask on an online discussion forum. She also helped kids identify mystery forest objects at The Festival of Bright Ideas.

02.01.2022 Some lovely images from the field this week! Here a group of bird banders: Catherine Young (with umbrella) and Jas Allnut with Steve Klose and David Hamilton (the photographers, not pictured) brave the early morning chill to band a Dusky Robin and Eastern Spinebill at the Waterworks Reserve.

01.01.2022 In this Nature editorial, SNS's David Bowman shares his concerns about global bushfires and some ways we can try to reduce their impact. University of Tasmania https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05840-4

01.01.2022 Corvids (crow family) show self control and forethought at the level of great apes! So much for "bird brains"! http://www.sciencemag.org//ravens-humans-and-apes-can-plan

01.01.2022 Sue Baker from the UTAS School of Biological Sciences and Andrew Hughes from the Bookend Trust visited the Tahune Airwalk with some Tree House Challenge participating families. We had fun exploring both the canopy and ground habitats, spotting tree hollows, puffballs, red brown blocky rot in an old log, and lots of plants of course. When we asked the kids which taxa on the species list might be most numerous, they said "beetles or fungi" first off - impressive! It was also lovely driving down the Arve Rd in the snow. Thanks to the Tahune Airwalk for heavily discounted entry!