Plant Ecologist

I lead the Plant Ecology Lab at the Department of Ecology, Environment & Evolution at La Trobe University, Victoria. Our Lab comprises quantitative ecologists who focus on processes that determine the structure & function of plant communities, from small- to macro-ecological scales. Understanding long-term change, plant functional trait responses, and recruitment ecology underpin much of our work.

In the alpine, our work focuses on understanding long-term vegetation changes. We have long-term monitoring plots distributed across the Victorian Alps that focus on threatened communities (e.g. snowpatches), threatened species (e.g. Rock Carraway) and threatening processes (e.g. weed invasions, deer, and climate change). This monitoring builds on pioneering work established by Maisie Fawcett and John Turner in the 1940s and provides great insight into the temporal dynamics of these restricted ecosystems.