Brenton was recently an invited speaker at Western Australia’s inaugural Biosecurity Careers and Networking Event. Hosted by Murdoch University’s Harry Butle...
We are delighted to welcome Josh Lemmon to the PBG team. Josh has joined our team as an Honours student under the supervision of Dr Brenton von Takach. His r...
We are excited to have recently welcomed Carine Siew to the PBG team. Carine has joined our team as an Honours student, under the supervision of Prof. Ben Ph...
PBG hosted a three-day workshop on Bayesian inference in R, in early February. Quantitative ecologist, Dr Matthijs Hollanders, presented the workshop, which ...
Dr Holly Kirk officially joins us today. Holly has been with us as a research associate since 2024, but is now moving her ARC Industry Fellowship to Curtin....
We are delighted to welcome Normandie to the PBG team. Normandie joins us from Puerto Rico, where she has been working on projects ranging from orchids to to...
I recently had a fun yarn with David Karsten about cane toads and the Toad Containment Zone. The discussion ranged across cane toads and where they came from...
Congratulations to Brenton! Brenton was awarded the 2024 Early-Career Researcher of the Year award at Curtin’s 2024 Research and Engagement Awards, celebrati...
Working with the fantastic team at Rangelands NRM, we delivered the second of our major workshops around the cane toad containment zone (TCZ). The workshop w...
BHP Social Investments has provided a $400,000 grant for us to develop and test toad proof infrastructure for the Toad Containment Zone (TCZ). The funding w...
We are delighted to welcome Ian to the PBG team. Ian joins us from (most recently) Singapore where he has been working as a bioinformatician. Ian is taking ...
I recently attended a tree climbing event organised by City of Canning and City of Vincent. Not because I am particularly good at climbing trees, but becaus...
Brenton recently attended the 10th World Congress of Herpetology, which was held in Kuching, Malaysia. Brenton presented the background and analytical pipeli...
In late July, the Population Biology and Genomics team (Ben, Brenton, Haylee, Judy, Andy, John, Marta, and Holly) embarked on our first Writing Retreat! The ...
We are pleased to welcome Marta Karolak to our team!
Working with the fantastic team at Rangelands NRM, we delivered the first of two major workshops around the cane toad containment zone (TCZ). The workshop wa...
I recently had the pleasure of engaging with several teams of smart and creative students taking part in Curtin’s annual Sustainability Challenge.
As part of National Science Week, the WA Museum worked with Brenton to create a video on his research. In the video, titled ‘Northern Quolls: Genetics to the...
Cane toads have completely invaded WA’s iconic Kimberley region. Their invasion of the Kimberley has killed hundreds of thousands of native animals and irrev...
Congratulations to Brenton! Brenton was awarded the 2023 Early-Career Research Award in the Curtin University Science and Engineering Pro Vice-Chancellor’s S...
We have launched the Curtin University School of Molecular & Life Sciences Coding Club! Presented by PBG, Coding Club will run fortnightly during the tea...
We welcome Dr John Ohiolei to our team!
We recently hosted a forum between Curtin University and the Western Australian Biodiversity Science Institute (WABSI) urban biodiversity program to explore ...
We recently hosted a two-day workshop on the ‘Cost and Feasibility of Eradicating Invasive Species’. The workshop was presented by Dr Dave Ramsey and Dr Mich...
Ben was invited to deliver the keynote address at the Future opportunities and challenges in invasive species management: bringing science and community toge...
Ben and Brenton were recently invited to speak at the weekly Bentley Agriculture and Biology Seminar Series, hosted by the Centre for Crop and Disease Manage...
Ben recently authored a commentary piece ‘The evolution of a hobo snail’ for PCI Evolutionary Biology. PCI is a new publishing model that looks to avoid pub...
Brenton recently attended the first Invasive Species Working Group for the Integrated Pest Management Omics initiative. Brenton met with a variety of experts...
Ben attended a research prioritisation workshop organised by Kings Park Science and the Harry Butler Institue at Murdoch university. It was a meeting of con...
Ben met with Nyangumarta and Karajarri rangers to design sand plot surveys to enable monitoring of toad-affected species. The work was conducted on Nyangumar...
Brenton has led a new research paper on managing populations of the endangered norther quoll (Dasyurus hallucatus). The paper, ‘Conservation prioritisation o...
Ben recently provided teaching materials for a year 9 science class, in the form of two pre-recorded presentations. The idea is for the students to hear fro...
Over the past month Haylee and Brenton have been working to establish the Population Biology and Genomics Group laboratory, and we are pleased to say, it is ...
Ben was recently invited to deliver the plenary talk at the annual Curtin University School of Molecular and Life Sciences research symposium. Ben’s presenta...
Brenton was recently invited to give a small talk at a symposium being held at the official signing of the 2024-2028 Western Australian Biodiversity Science ...
Ben was featured in a short video from ABC News Perth on the “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity to prevent cane toads from spreading in parts of Western Austra...
ABC News environment reporter, Peter de Kruijff, reported on the impending invasion of cane toads further into Western Australia in the article ‘Doubts cane ...
Brenton was recently invited to contribute to the Forrest Research Foundation’s podcast series, Clever Quokkas.
I recently spent a day with the Polyphagous Shot-Hole Borer Incident Response Team (PSHBIRT for short). Mind blown.
Brenton was recently invited to give a plenary talk at the 69th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Australian Mammal Society.
Members of the Population Biology and Genomics Group attended the Biodiversity Conference 2023: Listen to Country, where they presented on the impending cane...
Congratulations to Tash Harrison, this year’s recipient of the Ada Jackson Irwin Street Commemoration Award in Zoology, at UWA.
The toad invasion front is now 150km from Broome.
We’ve been announced!
Brenton was recently invited to give a talk to the Darling Range Branch of the WA Naturalists’ Club.
Ben and Brenton have arrived at Curtin and are working through the onboarding process. We have been ably assisted by our School business manager, Gail Wesco...
I've made a shiny app that gives a ten-day forecast, by country, on likely numbers of coronavirus cases. The app is designed to give people a sense of how...
Are you an academic? Want to do less, and make your research accessible to all? Read on. Academic publishing companies make vast profits by selling acce...
Let's start with a doomed species. The white lemuroid possum is a spectacular creature that lives in the high altitude rainforest of Australia. As climate c...
Rather than cut and paste, here's a link to a quick article explaining the idea. Read it and then read on... How on earth did we ever come up with th...
Pop quiz: what have cancer and cane toads got in common? Well, as it turns out, quite a lot. They're both examples of a spreading population. In the case of...
It goes without saying, perhaps, that your immune system is important to you. Without it, you'd rapidly be consumed by bacteria and fungus, and in the short...
All these fascinating results showing that things on expanding range edges evolve in certain ways got me thinking. When pathogens spread through ...
Cane toads are really good invaders. They move astonishing distances, and they breed like maniacs. A female toad can lay thousands of eggs at a ...
You may or may not have gathered by now, but I care about snakes. In fact, it could be argued that I misspent my youth chasing them. In these ad...
In northern Australia, the cane toad front pushes westward at around 55km per year; more than five times faster than it used to advance when toads were...