Dr Phil Jobling

Phil is a comparative physiologist interested in how vertebrates regulate their internal environment to cope with a changing external environment. He graduated from the University of Melbourne with a BSc (Hons) and  MSc undertaken in the Department of Zoology. During this time, he worked on the innervation of urinary system in teleost (Flathead and Toadfish) and control of blood flow in rodents.  After a brief “sabbatical” driving around Australia he found himself at the university of Queensland in the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology where he worked on autonomic control of rodent vasculature and spleen.  After handing in his PhD, he was awarded an American Heart Association postdoctoral fellowship to work on cardiovascular control of North American Bullfrogs at the University of Pittsburgh Department of Neurobiology. He returned to Australia on an NHMRC postdoctoral fellowship to work on autonomic control of internal organs in rodents at the Flinders University of South Australia. In 2004 he took up an academic position at the University of Newcastle in the School of Biomedical Sciences and Pharmacy.  Phil currently works on a range of projects exploring the link between the nervous and immune systems in response to stress and disease. Within the Conservation Science Research Group, he collaborates with amphibian biologists to investigate the use of non-invasive physiological biomarkers of stress, immune function and reproduction to help manage two species of endangered frogs, Littlejohn’s tree frog and the Green and Golden Bell Frog.  By monitoring health of these amphibians, the group hopes to better predict population dynamics in response to disease and a changing climate.