Lesley is an animal physiologist who is interested in understanding the metabolic and behavioural responses of ectotherms to climate warming.

Lesley predominantly uses the fruit fly, Drosophila, in laboratory-based experiments to study the capacity of ectotherms to respond to climate warming through physiological acclimation and evolutionary adaptation.

The outcomes of her research are important for informing policymakers and conservation efforts about how human-mediated environmental change may threaten biodiversity.

Jeremy is a lecturer and group leader in the School of Biological Sciences at Monash University.

Jeremy is a bacteriophage biologist who uses experimental systems to investigate the interactions between bacteriophages, their bacterial hosts and eukaryotic cells and environments they colonise within the human body.

His main study system is the mucosal surface: a microbe-rich, protective barrier that covers the active epithelium of the body, including the gut, lung and urinary tract among other locales.

Alex is a PhD candidate. He is broadly interested in how natural populations and communities respond to change using both experimental and modelling approaches, and extracting actionable insights from this work for policy.

Alex will be experimentally evolving harpacticoid copepods (Tisbe sp.) to evaluate the eco-evolutionary response to food-rich and food-poor environments. He will couple this experimental work with integral projection models to predict future population dynamics.

Michael is a Professor and Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow in the School of Mathematical Sciences at QUT in Brisbane.

He is interested in spatial aspects of ecology, evolution and conservation, particularly when multiple actors are present, interacting and competing: species, conservation organisations, genotypes.

Hayley is a post doctoral research fellow, interested in the evolutionary ecology of life-histories, particularly within species. She combines manipulative experiments with statistical and population modelling approaches to better understand the forces that shape diversity in life-history strategies.

Hayley is currently investigating how offspring size can determine the energetic costs of development across the tree of life.

In her PhD, she investigated how competitive and facilitative interactions among offspring of different sizes might maintain variation in offspring size at various biological scales, both within clutches produced by the same female and among females from the same population.

Belinda is a PhD candidate interested in optimising the aquaculture of micro- and macro-algae for human consumption.

The aquaculture industry is growing at a rapid rate, supplying much of the world with sources of food, feed stocks and high-value chemicals. As a relatively novel space, the aquaculture industry has immense potential for optimization.

Belinda’s PhD aims to explore experimental evolution can be used to enhance land-based aquaculture processes to produce desired traits and molecules at sustainable and productive rates.

Tim is a lecturer in genetics within the School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Australia.

Tim is interested in the intersection between evolutionary theory and data, including specific models used to explain biological observations, and similarly, how models and statistics can answer difficult questions in evolutionary biology. His research generally focuses on the evolution of sexual dimorphism, adaptation and evolutionary constraints, sex chromosome evolution, life-history tradeoffs, and the maintenance of genetic variation in populations.

Professor Tim Coulson is Professor of Zoology at Jesus College, The University of Oxford, United Kingdom.

Tim uses structured population models parameterized with data from laboratory and field systems to link ecological and evolutionary theory. He has developed mathematical models to connect population dynamics, quantitative genetics, population genetics and life history theory.

Tim is particularly interested in understanding the ecological and evolutionary impacts that environmental change has on natural systems. His research group examines how demographic rates vary across genotypes, phenotypes and environments, identifying the ecological, evolutionary and conservation consequences of this variation.

Sam is a PhD candidate.

Broadly, he is interested in different life-history strategies and their effect on the evolution of biological communities.

Sam’s PhD research examines reproductive effort across taxa and the consequences it may have on the flux of energy in biological systems.

Matt is an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) DECRA fellow and group leader in the School of Biological Sciences at Monash University.

Matt’s current research investigates the evolutionary genetics of life’s big challenges: sex, death, and disease. Central to these topics is an understanding of how energy is acquired, used, or exploited throughout a host’s life. Projects include understanding why hosts differ in their capacity to be exploited by a pathogen, how differences between the sexes in their condition and energy use influence the evolution of disease, and does the energy efficiency of a host or pathogen influence its rate of spread during an invasion.

George is a PhD candidate interested in the effects of larval experience on adult performance.

For animals with multiple life stages, traits that benefit larval success are not always beneficial in later stages of development.

By comparing life history strategies among animals that differ in their developmental mode, George aims to identify the evolutionary mechanisms that facilitate ontogeny throughout complex life cycles.

Professor Dustin Marshall is an Australian Research Council (ARC) Research Fellow and head of the Marine Evolutionary Ecology Group (MEEG) in the School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Australia.

He has published more than 150 papers, is Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Oikos, and an editor for invited review papers for Science, Annual Reviews, Trends in Ecology and Evolution and Current Biology.

Dustin’s research interests focus on how variation affects the evolution and ecology of marine organisms. Currently, he is interested in using quantitative genetics approaches to understand the limits of adaptation in marine organisms and the evolution of life histories.

Mike is a lecturer and group leader in the School of Biological Sciences at Monash University.

Mike is interested in the genetics of adaptation. His experimental approach is to grow populations of yeast (and other microbes) for thousands of generations in a variety of environments, observing evolution as it happens. With the tools of whole genome sequencing, statistical analysis and genetic engineering his group works towards finding rules for how new mutations and natural selection shape a better adapted organism.

Christen is the Head of the Developmental Responses to Environmental Change Research Group in The School of Biological Sciences at Monash University.

Christen is interested in understanding the molecular mechanisms that underlie environmentally- and genetically-induced variation in body size and shape. Christen and her research group use the genetic tools available in Drosophila melanogaster to dissect how environmental signals, like nutrition and temperature, regulate growth and foraging choices.

Liz is the Administrations Manager at the Centre for Geometric Biology.

Liz is responsible for administration including organising and facilitating workshops and visits from students and academics. Liz is also responsible for communicating the research interests and outputs of the centre to a broad audience.

Please get in touch with Liz if you have any general enquiries that relate to the centre.

Michaela is a PhD candidate interested in evolutionary ecology and physiology.

During her PhD, Michaela will be taking advantage of the evolved lines of algae and copepods to investigate how size and resource supply affect metabolic rates and how interactions with other species impact these relationships. She uses a combination of lab and field experiments to test her ideas.

Ashley is a PhD candidate interested in the causes and consequences of metabolic rate in sperm.

All metazoans reproduce sexually using sperm which means that they are extremely abundant. Sperm fulfils essential roles in reproduction and offspring success meaning they are not biologically inert as once thought.

The aims of Ashley’s PhD are to take a macroevolutionary approach by looking at interspecific variation of sperm metabolism as it scales with size, and
take a microevolutionary approach by investigating selection on metabolism as it covaries with other traits in several broadcast spawners.

Emily is a PhD student interested in understanding the ecological and evolutionary consequences of particular life history strategies. Most animal species develop via complex life cycles, passing through stages to reach maturity.

Emily’s PhD aims to investigate the evolution of complex life histories and whether ecological factors can predict when and why life history transitions occur.

Professor Craig White is an evolutionary physiologist interested in describing and understanding the causes and consequences of physiological variation in animals.

Craig’s current research focuses on the evolution of periodic ventilation in insects, macrophysiological and allometric variation in the energy expenditure of animals, and the role of physiology in structuring communities.

His research group studies a range of traits, with an emphasis on body size, metabolic rate, water loss, and breathing patterns; and employs a range of approaches including manipulative experiments, comparative studies, experimental evolution, and quantitative genetic analyses. His group works chiefly on insects, but has collected physiological data for a diverse range of taxa including marine invertebrates, aquatic and terrestrial arthropods, fish, reptiles, birds and mammals.