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While I enjoyed my recently completed honours year which was largely a lab based physiology project (see below) I am looking to expand my research experience to include a field based ecology projects with useful conservation outcomes (somewhere like Cape York would be nice, or the Amazon, or maybe Tahiti). To date I have been interested in amphibian and freshwater fish research, however this list is slowly expanding.

Honours Project: I investigated the interactive effects of low pH and humic acids on the growth and performance of tadpoles of the common striped marsh frog, Limnodynastes peroni. Water of low pH (as low as 3.5) and high humic acid content is typical of the coastal wallum environments of south-east Queensland. The tannin stained or “tea tree lakes” of the sand islands such as Stradbroke and Fraser Islands are particularly good examples of Wallum habitats. As striped marsh frogs are not commonly found in Wallum habitats we hypothesised that both low pH and naturally occurring humic acids would decrease growth and burst swimming performance of the tadpoles. Decreasing pH did do just that, but increasing the humic acid content of the water offered a protective effect against low pH. At pH 4.0 treatments with increased humic acid content had improved growth and swimming performance. While providing us with some very interesting results this research opened many new interesting questions.