karen rowe
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Research in our lab covers a range of topics and taxonomic groups (primarily birds) and relies heavily on museum collections, field notes, biodiversity surveys, and fieldwork. Current topics include the application of acoustics and environmental DNA for monitor threatened species, documenting spatial and temporal patterns of species' distributions over time, and evaluating the impact of ecological disturbances on soundscapes.
Karen received her Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2007. Since then, she has worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley and Museums Victoria. She is currently the Curator of Birds at Museums Victoria and holds an honorary fellow position at the University of Melbourne. |
Now accepting new lab members!
current lab members
Students
Mike Liefman - Masters (2024), University of Melbourne
Mike is working within the Ecosystem Resilience project to evaluate the impacts of fire on nocturnal birds across ecological fire groups in Victoria. His work will capitalise on the use of acoustic recorders to detect nocturnal species typically underrepresented in diurnal, point count transect surveys.
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Eirene Carajias - Honours (2024), University of Melbourne
Eirene is developing a way to assess abundance of the endangered Australasian Bittern using acoustic recorder arrays and sound localisation. By identifying how many and where bitterns are within their wetland habitats, we can improve our understanding and they dynamics of habitat use and population numbers in Victoria.
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Staff
Liam Meredith - Research ASSISTANT (Sounds of Recovery)
Liam leads coordination of Sounds of Recovery, a community engagement project that facilitates the uptake of ecoacoustics technology by citizen scientists. This project aims to track the recovery of wildlife after the 2019-20 Black Summer fires in East Gippsland.
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Megan McLeod - Research ASSISTANT, Birds and Mammals (Ecosystem Resilience)
Megan coordinates and conducts extensive wildlife camera and acoustic surveys throughout Victoria to document the impacts of fire across different ecological fire groups. Working closely with the University of Melbourne and state land management agencies, Megan's work aims to improve predictive fire modeling and enhance ecological outcomes for wildlife.
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Bradley Clarke-Wood - Research ASSISTANT, Birds and Mammals (Ecosystem Resilience)
Bradley shares responsibility for coordinating and conducting camera and acoustic surveys with the Ecosystem Resilience team. He also leads the acoustic analysis components of the project, which includes extensive listening surveys on the collected audio data. His work contributes to expanding our understanding of how birds respond to fire as well as developing new acoustic survey protocols for the state.
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Erin Thomas - Research Assistant, Mammalogy (Ecosystem Resilience)
Erin started on the Ecosystem Resilience team in 2021 and she has been conducting fieldwork collecting camera and acoustics data across Victoria ever since. Her efforts to document wildlife across eight different Ecological Fire Groups help us better understand the complexity of species' responses to fire over time.
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former lab members
Students
kara joshi - masters (2014), University of Melbourne
Kara completed her Masters degree evaluating the time and cost trade-offs between manual and automated methods of species identification in long-duration field recordings.
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Alina pung - masters (2016), University of Melbourne
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Post-docs
Amy Adams (2015-16)
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