• Home
  • Publications
  • Research
  • Links
  • CV
  • Resources
  • Blog
  • Home
  • Publications
  • Research
  • Links
  • CV
  • Resources
  • Blog
  Anna MacDonald
  • Home
  • Publications
  • Research
  • Links
  • CV
  • Resources
  • Blog

My blog posts

    Anna MacDonald

    I'm a biologist with interests in genetics, conservation, ecology, invasive species, and wildlife management.
    ​

    This page mostly aggregates my posts from elsewhere, usually WildlifeSNPits.

    Archives

    May 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    February 2018
    March 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    January 2015
    September 2014
    March 2014

    Categories

    All
    AcademicLife
    Animals
    Antimicrobials
    Australia
    Bandicoots
    Behind The Paper
    Bettongs
    Bilby
    Biodiversity
    Bioinformatics
    Blogging
    Camera Traps
    Carnivores
    Citizen Science
    Climate Change
    Conferences
    Conservation
    Conservation Biology
    Conservation Genetics
    Conservation Genomics
    Conservation Success
    Conservation Units
    Cryptic Species
    Cuscus
    Data Collection
    DNA Barcoding
    DNA Detection
    DNA Extraction
    DNA Sequencing
    DNA Testing
    Domestication
    Earth Day
    Ecosystem Engineers
    ECR
    EDNA
    Endangered Species
    Evolution
    Experimental Design
    False Negative
    False Positive
    Field Work
    Friday Link Dump
    Genetic Diversity
    Genomics
    Grasslands
    Habitat Loss
    Inspiration
    Invasive Species
    Laboratory
    Mammal March Madness
    Mammals
    Marsupial Mole
    Marsupials
    Metabarcoding
    Microsatellites
    New Guinea
    Opossums
    PCR
    Plastic
    Policy
    Pollution
    Population Genetics
    Pouches
    Predation
    Predator Prey Interactions
    Predator-prey Interactions
    Quokkas
    Quolls
    Reproduction
    Reptiles
    Research
    Rewilding
    Sampling
    Scicomm
    Science Communication
    Science Outreach
    Science Policy
    Selfies
    Seminars
    Species
    Species Concepts
    Species Delimitation
    STEM
    Student Travel Awards
    Taxonomy
    Tissue Collection
    Volunteering
    Wallabies
    Wildlife
    Wildlife Disease
    Wildlife Management
    Wildlife Trade
    Wombats
    Women In Science
    Women In STEM

    RSS Feed

Back to Blog

WildlifeSNPits Post 02/02/2018: How the sugar glider got to Tasmania and why this is bad news for difficult birds

2/2/2018

 
Click here to read the full post at WildlifeSNPits.

When is a native species also invasive, and how can we tell? This may seem a strange question, but it highlights the difficulty we sometimes face determining the boundaries of the area in which a species naturally occurs. Especially when detection is imperfect and those boundaries may change over time. Animals move. Plants move. Sometimes a species will naturally move into a new area, and we recognise this as a range expansion. At other times, a species may only be able to move to a new area with human help (deliberate or unintentional), and this may create a new, invasive population.

​Think about Australia. If I asked you to name an invasive mammal, you might choose a fox, cat, rabbit or pig. These are clearly not native to Australia. What if I ask you to name a native mammal? Maybe you chose a red kangaroo or a wombat? They are both native to Australia, but they are not native to ALL of Australia. If we were to move a native species to a new part of the country where it had never previously occurred, it may not find the resources it needs to survive, but if it did, we may have created a new invasive population – an invasive native...
Picture
Photo credit Dejan Stojanovic
0 Comments
Read More
Back to Blog

WildlifeSNPits post 04/03/2017: Marsupial misconceptions: weird mammals, placentas and pouches

5/3/2017

 
Click here to read the full post at WildlifeSNPits

I’ve now been living in Australia for almost 18 years, and I’m an unashamed convert to #TeamMarsupial. Marsupials are fascinating animals in both evolutionary and ecological terms, but at times I am surprised by how poorly-understood they are. I’ve been thinking of writing a post to address some recurring marsupial misconceptions for a while. When I saw how many marsupials were in the lineup for this year’s Mammal March Madness (more on this below) I decided that the time was right! So here we have it: eight things you might not know about marsupials, and profiles of the eight amazing marsupial species featured in Mammal March Madness 2017:

Eight things about marsupials…
Picture
Greater bilby (Macrotis lagotis). Image credit Judy Dunlop.
0 Comments
Read More
Back to Blog

WildlifeSNPits Post 17/05/2016: Bandicoots, the little marsupial diggers

18/5/2016

 
Click here to read the full post at WildlifeSNPits

Bandicoots are fascinating creatures, but I suspect few people outside Australia and New Guinea have ever heard of them, well, unless you count Crash Bandicoot…

They are probably best known in suburban Australia for infuriating gardeners with the conical pits, or “snout-pokes”, they dig whilst foraging for their food, which varies a little among species but usually includes fungi, plants and invertebrates. All Australian bandicoots are diggers, and a recent study estimated that a single southern brown bandicoot could dig as many as 45 foraging pits each day, meaning it has the potential to excavate around 3.9 tonnes of soil each year! That’s not bad for an animal that weighs less than 2 kilograms.

In the not too distant past, bandicoots and their relatives could be found across almost the entire Australian continent, but theirs has been a sad story of extinction and decline since Europeans arrived. Today, thanks to habitat loss, competition from introduced rabbits, and predation by introduced cats and foxes (check out this camera trap photo, captured by Guy Ballard, of a feral cat with a bandicoot), many populations have diminished or disappeared. This may have real implications for the ecology of Australia: digging mammals seem to have important roles in soil turnover, water and nutrient cycling, and seedling recruitment, and the decline of these little diggers may have caused a deterioration in ecosystem function across the Australian continent.
​
There is an awful lot more I could share about bandicoot ecology and evolution, but for now I want to concentrate on explaining what a bandicoot is, how many species there are, and where in the world they are found. I hope you’ll agree with me that as well as being amazingly cute (the official term is “bandicute”) they are also amazingly interesting...​

Picture
0 Comments
Read More
Back to Blog

WildlifeSNPits post 28/11/2015: Rewilding: restoring lost species to save ecosystems

29/11/2015

 
Click here to read the full post at WildlifeSNPits

​At first they were just shadows, dark impressions glimpsed through the mist. Is that really…? Could it be…? As we moved a little closer one of them turned to the east, to face the rising sun. His profile was unmistakable, the curved horns and humped shoulders proclaiming “bison”!
Picture

​And not just any bison, but free-ranging European bison, grazing in the meadows on the edge of the largest remnant of primeval forest in Europe. Without a doubt, this encounter during my visit to Poland in July was the stand-out wildlife experience of my year. With an emphasis on WILD. I suspect that experience is also what prompted this post, on the topic of rewilding.

Rewilding. It’s an evocative word. It’s also a word that seems to turn up quite regularly in my news feeds at the moment. Every so often, friends ask me what I think about rewilding. To answer them I wanted to gain a better understanding of some of the issues surrounding rewilding, so I thought I’d do a little reading, then write a quick blog post on the topic.

Well, that was a mistake! I’ve just emerged from one of those internet black holes, following one link after another, browsing paper after news article after blog, reading about some wonderful conservation projects, outlandish ideas (some good, some… less good) and first person perspectives from all sides of the debate.

So what have I learned?

Well… it’s complicated.
0 Comments
Read More
Proudly powered by Weebly