Overview
Topic status: We're looking for students to study this topic.
Forty million years ago marsupials were distributed across all continents and have since become extinct throughout most of their range. Predation and competition from introduced placentals is the major conservation threat to marsupials in Australia. This project will employ evolutionary models to investigate the apparent competitive or predatory advantages of placentals over marsupials. Current hypotheses range from there being no marsupial disadvantage (just bad luck) to disadvantages conferred by historical contingencies (such as isolation) and deficiencies in marsupial reproductive modes, metabolism and developmental plasticity.
A further aim of the project is to investigate the mechanisms that have promoted and maintained marsupial biodiversity in Australasia and how these mechanisms differ among other continental mammal faunas. Research would involve obtaining marsupial DNA sequences and employing these in evolutionary analyses and/or developing models of diversification, extinction and ecological niche evolution. Students with molecular laboratory and/or bioinformatics skills are particularly encouraged to consider this project.
Note that the Honours projects listed by this supervisor may also be scalable to Masters/PhD. For those topics see the Faculty of Science and Technology list of Honours biogeoscience topics or search.
- Study level
- PhD, Masters
- Supervisors
- QUT
- Organisational unit
Science and Engineering Faculty
- Research area
- Contact
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Please contact the supervisor.
Dr Matthew Phillips
