Student info

[home] [research] [people] [publications] [students] [contacts] [links]

If you want to contact Peter about our research or potential student projects, see here for how to get me. I welcome enquiries from students about research at honours or postgraduate level. The Botany School has a lively intellectual culture and has been particularly successful in obtaining grant funding and publishing high quality science.

Undergraduate

For undergrads wanting to come out with a good set of skills and conceptual understanding useful for doing the sort of research that we do, I have this to say. I'd recommend studying ecology, include some maths, learn about evolution, don't shy away from the structure and function courses. Learn critical thinking.

Honours and postgraduate

For honours, in particular, it may be best if you can fit in with my current research. Particularly, if there is field work involved. This is because research costs $$$ and field work is difficult and potentially hazardous. However, if you come to me with an interesting question outside these research areas and the motivation to follow it up I will certainly consider it. Some sample honours projects that I am interested in but that are outside the major funded areas of research are listed below.

I encourage co-supervised projects, especially where a modelling component is involved and would recommend chatting with Mark Burgman or Mick McCarthy, and postdocs Brendan Wintle and Jane Elith because these guys have far greater modelling skills than I'll ever have.

I'd also be keen to work with Ed Newbigin if you have interests in population genetics. Or Ian Woodrow if you want to weave in physiological approaches.

Here is information from the School of Botany for potential honours students.

The University of Melbourne has a number of scholarship schemes to support grad students. You should check out Botany's pages on postgraduate study. Be aware that when applying to do postgraduate study at the University of Melbourne, candidature and scholarships are handled by different administrative units.

Scott Keough at ANU has a fantastic page on useful info for potential, current and past graduate students.

Past students

Michael Longmore (BSc Hons Melb 2006) - Seed predation by ants in a fragmented Eucalyptus microcarpa woodland, in agricultural Central Victoria

Alex Thorp (BSc Hons Melbourne 2005-06) - Woodland restoration: the effect of pasture on the likelihood of Eucalyptus microcarpa seedling survival

Emma Franks (BFor/BSc Hons Melbourne 2005) - Survival and growth of environmental plantings in the North Central Catchment Management Area (350-800mm)

Rachael Nolan (BEnvSci Monash 2004)

Skye Winder (BEnvSci Monash 2004)
 
Potential projects using plant traits

Riparian plants in urban creeks

Riparian zones around waterways are often heavily invaded by weed species. how are the species that do well sorted by the environment? Using functional traits measured on plants found in riparian areas may help us to understand and predict species occurrence and assist management.

Resprouting and plant stems
Resprouting allows a plant to persist at a site following disturbances that remove above-ground biomass. Species differ widely in their ability to resprout. Species that have more stems are generally more successful at resprouting that single stemmed species. Why is this? Field and glasshouse clipping experiments could be used to investigate the relation between architecture and disturbance recovery.
The 2005 fires in Wilson’s Promontory provide an opportunity to study resprouting success among a range of taxa and how it relates to environmental factors like soil depth, aspect and fire intensity, and also to plant size.

Buds, bud banks and their costs
Retaining a reserve of buds or meristems for recovery from damage is widespread among plants, yet not ubiquitous. Presumably, there are costs to maintaining buds and for some species these costs outweigh the benefits. One aspect of cost variation between species is in the size of buds. How do bud sizes vary across species? Why have large buds, do larger buds lead to faster leaf expansion? How are basal buds distributed vertically along the stem? These questions can by investigated using field and glasshouse experiments as well as microscopy.

Ecological trait shifts between species along environmental gradients
Plants all use more or less the same resources: light, CO2, water and mineral nutrients. The major differences between species are in the way they acquire these resources by differential allocation between tissues and organs. Much effort is currently going in to understanding and quantifying the primary dimensions of variation between species. The steep environmental (soil, climate) gradients of the Melbourne region provide a terrific opportunity for understanding how species’ traits shift in response to the environment. This work could utilize field sampling of leaf, stem and seed traits for a range of species across sites.

[top of page]

[home]