It’s 2024, so we have fresh blood, and old blood joining the group. Isaac Sims and Lucy Southwell-Hambly are the new Honours students in the group. Lucy is doing a project co-supervised with Ajay Narendra at Macquarie University and Damien Callahan at Deakin, on the evolution of cuticular hydrocarbons in Myrmecia ants. Isaac is carrying out a study looking at whether the strength of Allen’s rule at a spatial scale predicts the strength on a temporal scale (i.e. whether species that show clear latitudinal trends in morphology are also show similar trends over time in relation to climate change).
We also welcome back Jake Tyers to the group, after a couple of years away doing work for an ecological consultancy. Jake is starting a PhD looking at predictors of bill size variation in birds, in particular how ecological traits influence spatial variation. Lovely to see him back with us.
The Symonds Lab 