Dr Janet Gardner ‘How are Australian birds affected by climate change?’

Climate change is having profound effects on the dynamics of natural populations. This talk will focus on how Australian birds are affected by our changing climate and will provide insights into the mechanisms that are driving change. It’ll describe how we have made novel use of the time-series available through museum collections and bird banding data from citizen science, with a particular focus on the ways climate change affects the size and shape of birds. The work aims to inform our understanding of species’ sensitivities to climate change and their capacity to adapt.

Janet spent 10 years working for State government agencies in applied conservation research before moving to Canberra to complete her PhD at the Australian National University in 2003. She was appointed as an Associate Lecturer in the Schools of Botany & Zoology and Biochemistry & Molecular Biology (ANU) in 2004, then as an ARC-funded Research Associate at ANU in 2006. From 2008-2010 she was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at CSIRO supported by grants from the Australian National Wildlife Collection Foundation, and subsequently as an ARC-funded Research Fellow at Monash University 2012-2015. In February 2015 she returned to the ANU as a Research Fellow and was awarded an ARC Future Fellowship in December 2015.