I am seeking a PhD candidate for a funded research project to predict how vulnerable western spiny-tailed skinks (Egernia stokesii badia) are to changing and extreme climates.

This project will involve close collaboration with DBCA, AWC, Curtin University, and the Bandi Barna Aboriginal Corporation.

Traditional measures of thermal tolerance provide unrealistic predictions of an animal’s ability to survive heat stress in the wild because they do not account for the complex patterns of temperature exposure animals experience.

This project will test the thermal load sensitivity framework by manipulating the intensity, duration, and frequency of heat stress, and the organism’s capacity to acclimate and repair heat-induced damage.