Behaviour, Ecology and Conservation of Birds
Peters Research Group
We use an integrative approach to understand how animals balance investment in reproduction and self-maintenance, and the consequences of this for individual success and population persistence. We study individuals throughout life in their natural environment. Consequently, our research spans several areas:
1. Cooperative breeding
The complex behavioural strategies that group living birds employ to advance their success.
2. Health, Disease & aging
What factors impinge on immune defense and damage control and how this relates to aging.
3. Global change
The impacts of climate change and other anthropogenic changes aiming to identify the environmental factors that buffer these impacts.
Our field projects involve long-term studies of purple-crowned fairy-wrens, Malurus coronatus, in the Kimberley region of north-west Australia, and a local population of superb fairy-wrens (M. cyaneus) at Lysterfield Park.
We acknowledge the Bunuba and Kija People as the Traditional Custodians of the lands where we study purple-crowned fairy-wrens. We pay respect to their past, present, and future Elders and their profound cultural and spiritual connection to the land, and the importance of the purple-crowned fairy-wren within this.
We acknowledge the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation as the Traditional Custodians of the lands where we live and study. We pay respect to their past, present, and future Elders and their profound cultural and spiritual connection to the land.
We welcome, value, and respect the diversity of all people.
News in Brief
Hotter temperatures cause hidden cellular ageing in wild birds.
Climate change is causing hidden, cumulative cellular damage in wild birds, according to new research led by Monash University.
The study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, examined how non-lethal heat exposure impacts telomere dynamics in the purple-crowned fairy-wren (Malurus coronatus), a species native to the tropical regions of Australia. The species is endemic to the Kimberley Region in Western Australia, as well as the Victoria River Region and Gulf of Carpentaria in the Northern Territory.
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Mothers Matter Most: Maternal, but Not Paternal, Age and Inbreeding Affect Nestling Telomere Length in a Wild Passerine.
Early-life telomere length can be an integrated and accessible biomarker of lifetime fitness. Telomere length can result from complex interactions between heritable genetic variation, inherited gametic variation and accumulated environmental effects acting on individuals and parents. Consequently, to understand early-life telomere length and its fitness consequences, both offspring traits and intergenerational effects resulting from parental traits need to be studied simultaneously……
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Climate change threatens movement of endangered wren in the Kimberley
Habitat degradation and erratic rainfall conditions are impacting the movement of birds through northern Australia’s fragmented landscape, a new study conducted at Mornington Wildlife Sanctuary on Bunuba Country has found. Analysing 17 years of data about the movement of nearly 800 endangered Purple-crowned Fairy-wrens in north-west Western Australia, researchers from Monash University have for the first time been able to identify exactly how human-induced habitat degradation and climate change are impacting the movement of birds who live alongside creeks and rivers in northern Australia.
Read the rest of the article here.
Wildfire threatens the survival of endangered purple-crowned fairy-wrens living along the rivers and creeks of northern Australia, our new research has found.
For almost two decades, we studied the fairy-wrens at a wildlife sanctuary in the far north of Western Australia. Over this time, one low-intensity fire and one high-intensity fire burnt through our study site. Both occurred late in the wet season, when fires generally burn at lower intensity.
Read the rest of theconversation article here.
