Queen's University Biological Station 2021 Virtual Seminar Series

Join us on Wednesday June 2nd, 2021 with Australian conservation biologist and herpetologist Jodi Rowley.  

The bushfires in southeastern Australia during the summer of 2019/20 were unprecedented in their extent and intensity. From September 2019 to January 2020, more than 17 million hectares of forest burnt in Australia. By area, this was the largest fire season in southeastern Australia since European occupation and the impact of these fires on biodiversity is likely to be dramatic. However, there is little information available on the response of most biodiversity, particularly amphibians and reptiles, to fire. As a result, post-fire management decisions have been hindered by a lack of knowledge, with prioritisation efforts based on best guesses rather than empirical evidence. This presentation will focus on the data gathered rapidly and across a large scale in the wake of these fires via the continental-scale citizen science project, FrogID. This data provided the best available information on the response of Australia’s frogs to these fires, and provide great hope in the ability of many frog species to survive such events. Citizen science projects like FrogID, alongside targeted scientific surveys, will be vital to conservation in response to increasing anthropogenically-driven ecological events.

Register and Join us!

https://queensu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJItdOyhqDItHtAfPL7odlVuXtJh_UoBnYDV