Phil Pollett's Research Pages

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ARC Funded Projects

Animal movement between populations deduced from family trees: a test case on dugongs in southern Queensland (2008-2010)

[With Janet Lanyon, School of Integrative Biology, The University of Queensland. Collaborating organizations: Consolidated Rutile Ltd and Sea World.]

Summary

We will develop a new method for estimating animal movements using information contained in family trees. Movement estimates are essential to population models that assist natural resource managers to plan species recovery and to predict the effect of future challenges, such as human-mediated activities and climate change. A PhD student and the project team will evaluate ways of constructing family trees from genetic data and develop a statistic that describes animal movement between populations that is based on the families whose members were sampled in more than one population. Empirical data will be sourced from a long-term mark-recapture study of dugongs in Moreton Bay, and new samples from two adjacent populations.

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feel free to e-mail me: pkp@maths.uq.edu.au