As the year comes to a close, members of the Conservation Science Research Group were asked about their highs, lows and learnings from the past year. Here's some snapshots from our dedicated group members reflecting on this years activities and achievements.
1. Best and Worst Moments of 2024
"Moments that Defined the Year" We asked participants to share their standout moments—both good and bad—from 2024. Here are some highlights:
🧬 'Best moment, probably a combination of getting good quality samples for my gene expression studies and the offer of help to analyse the results.' - Anne Ibbotson, PhD Candidate
🐧 'Best moment was going to South Africa and seeing African Penguins in the wild (used to work with them at Denver Zoo).' - Cassandra Bugir, CSRG Alumna
🐨 'Best and worst moment of the year was tracking a dropped koala collar in the middle of a swamp for 4 hours with James.' - Charlotte Rigolot, PhD Candidate
🦘 ''Best moment was catching a wallaby even though it was a swamp wallaby (I research Parma wallabies).' - Emily Jarvis, PhD Candidate
📄'Best moment was submitting my thesis and realising that I didn’t have to write any more, my worst moment was when I finished my final presentation and realised I was finished my honour project. ' - James Taylor, CSRG Honours Alumnus
🐸'The best moment would be when I learned I could visit Borneo for the World Congress. The worst was filling all those admin forms for these trips without knowing why I had to fill them.' - Krishna Komanduri, PhD Candidate
👩🏼🔬'Worst: My metal lab analysis results failing; Best: Finishing my metal lab analyses' - Mattea Taylor, PhD Candidate
🪴'Best: visiting the DPI biocontrol rearing facility in Grafton. Worst: probably getting bitten by 50+ ticks on that same trip' - Amy Stephens, PhD Candidate
A special mention to Finella Dawlings, Nadine Nolan and Siosina Katoa who all managed to submit their PhD's this year, which is no easy feat, congratulations to you all!
2. Favourite Memories from Field, Lab, or Desktop
"Where Science Happens"
From muddy waders to clean lab coats, a few memories stood out this year.
It seems that the Barrington Tops trip was a highlight for our two undergrads Luke Reynolds and Yasmine Webb as well as PhD student Roshan Patel and Lecturer Alex Callen, who all described the beauty and amazing biodiversity of the area.
A couple of other stunning locations caught the eye of our researchers...
🌿'Visiting Mangrove Creek Dam on the Central Coast. It’s a beautiful spot, despite the huge sagittaria infestation' - Amy Stephens, PhD Candidate
🏝️'Broughton Island, so beautiful and incredible to see frogs at the beach' - Anne Ibbotson, PhD Candidate
🌲'Spotlighting in the cloud forest at Mt Hyland, complete with Parma Wallabies.' - Emily Jarvis, PhD Candidate
🏝️'Fieldwork on Norfolk island – there’s nothing poisonous or bitey, so it’s very relaxing' - Finella Dawlings, Research Associate
🦏'Watching a leopard in Sariska NP (India) and a greater one-horned rhino in Chitwan (Nepal)'. - Matt Hayward, Professor
While others enjoyed some time inside the lab and buried in data...
🐸'Meeting the lab frogs' - Jazmyn Miller, Undergrad
🧪'When a frozen sperm tube exploded on my face'' - Lily McGough, CSRG Honours Alumna
🧬'Getting DNA extractions to work after many trials. Yippee!!' - Nikki Watson, Honours Student
'🐸''First successful Littlejohn’s tree frog tadpole' - Rose Upton, Research Associate
'📄''Classic dorky favourite memory, that’s unique to this year, is digging into heaps of data sets and excel spreadsheet processing! Super stoked that heaps of people trusted me with their precious datasets and let me work some data magic on them, it’s definitely defined this year in a really good way.' - Yasmine Webb, Undergrad
Lets also not forget out heavy bias towards frogs in this group, we used to be a frog research group after all!
🐸'Getting to hang with Green and golden bell frogs again. They are so bloody beautiful in the moonlight!' - Michelle Hession, Postdoctoral Researcher
🐸'The best memory was a night out frogging and finding the endangered Littlejohns tree frog at a pond it had been missing from in the last three years.' - Nadine Nolan, CSRG PhD Alumna
🐸'The first time I went out frogging after completing my Honours project, (guilt free frogging!)' - James Taylor, CSRG Honours Alumnus
🐸'Luke getting attacked by an eel at Muddy Lake, eels aren't the target species unfortunately' - Kate Tunstill, PhD Candidate
'🐸''Hearing and then spotting eyes and bodies at night of what seemed like 80 bell frogs calling across a large expansive shallow wetland'' - Lynne Matthews, PhD Candidate
I guess we can hear about other species now...
🐨'The two weeks of koala catching that went on in July for our project. These two weeks went exceptionally well and now allow us to have plenty of information on two koala populations in NSW.'' - Charlotte Rigolot, PhD Candidate
🪽'Banding migratory shorebirds at 4am' - Mattea Taylor, PhD Candidate
3. Challenges Overcome in 2024
"Resilience in Action"
Every year brings its hurdles. Here’s how some participants triumphed over theirs:
🧸'Work-life balance. The answer was child-care, FYI.' - Michelle Hession, Postdoctoral Researcher
🌿'I find it hard to ‘stop and smell the roses’ when I am in the field as my time between research, teaching and everything else always seems compromised. I have been reminded of the joy of the field by some amazing students who take it all in and still get the job done. They find the most incredible things at every step they take!'' - Alex Callen, Lecturer
📄'Placement report because it was the largest assignment I have written and surviving the seminars'' - Jazmyn Miller, Undergrad
📖'The challenge of having the will to finish Honours' - Lily McGough, CSRG Honours Alumna
'📖''Juggling having a baby at the same time as doing an Honours thesis'' - Nikki Watson, Honours Student
✈️'This must be moving countries. Although it was worth it.' Krishna Komanduri, PhD Candidate
A common challenge this year for James Taylor, Kate Tunstill and Lynne Matthews was learning to code in R, a love-hate relationship indeed!
4. Scientific Discoveries That Inspired
"Ideas That Sparked Curiosity"
This year, our participants were captivated by findings across disciplines:
🧫'The Air Spora – check it out!' - Alex Callen, Lecturer
'🐸'The ‘frog sauna’ research that showed that bell frogs with chytrid are attracted to the shelters, and that once they clear infection they are more resistant to reinfection.' Anne Ibbotson, PhD Candidate
🧬'Leech iDNA – look it up''. - Emily Jarvis, PhD Candidate
💧'Gabriel's work on groundwater, something I have no experience in but have learnt a lot about this year!' - Kate Tunstill, PhD Candidate
🪰'The complete mapping of a fruit fly's brain'. 'This research has a lot of scientific implications, but what gets me excited is that s that we’re one step closer to figuring out how the physical brain works — kind of like Killian’s brain rain scene in Iron Man 3'- Krishna Komanduri, PhD Candidate
🐸'That the gut microbiome of amphibians influences their immunity and resistance to infections - just like humans - which is influenced by their environment' - Lynne Matthews, PhD Candidate
📄'We can market conservation messages according to the political leanings of various constituencies.' - Matt Hayward, Professor
🪽'The food preferences of birds may influence their ability to deal with toxins, i.e. generalist birds can have higher levels of mixed function oxidase (MFO) which allows them to better detoxify and thus cope with higher toxin levels than species with more specialised diets.' - Mattea Taylor, PhD Candidate
🌿'Blue/teal carbon trials. There are a lot of issues to work out but the idea of developers paying for habitat restoration for CCS is really appealing.' - Michelle Hession, Postdoctoral Researcher
🐸'That the Littlejohn’s tree frog demonstrate developmental plasticity during the larval stage under different hydroperiod regimes.' - Nadine Nolan, CSRG PhD Alumna
👩🏼🔬'Successful black footed ferret clone produced healthy offspring.' - Roshan Patel, PhD Candidate
🌍'One of the highlights while reading scientific literature this year was stumbling upon the field of Environmental History, as explored extremely aptly by Glenn Albrecht. I happened upon this field and form of inquiry while working on a smaller investigative geography project, and it strikes me as such a powerful application of how our natural history observations, both Indigenous and colonial, showcase to what degree our environments have changed over time.' - Yasmine Webb, Undergrad
As we wrap up 2024, we would like to thank everyone who has supported our group this year (even you readers!) and we look forward to more adventures, breakthroughs, and memories in 2025, as well as the new Centre for Conservation Science at the University of Newcastle.
Comments