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Nicola Mitchell
Publications A consistent theme in my research is understanding how the developmental environment selected by nesting vertebrates affects the phenotype of their young - a fertile area of investigation because of the interplay between developmental physiology and hot topics in ecology, including sexual selection, maternal effects and the impact of climate change on species distributions. I mostly work with amphibian and reptile models. Current projects are outlined briefly below. |  |
 | Mechanistic models for selection of translocation sites under climate change | Assisted migration - moving species to locations outside of their historic range - may be one means of preventing species extinction, but we need better methods for predicting the climatic suitability of translocation sites. This project is integrating biophysical and hydrological models to identify suitable habitats for Australia’s most endangered reptile – a tortoise currently restricted to a single breeding population in marginal habitat. Correlative models cannot predict future habitats for this species because of its small distribution, but a mechanistic approach will be a powerful tool for identifying wetlands where tortoises could survive and reproduce under drier, hotter climates. |
 | Honest signalling in terrestrial breeding frogs | The sexual selection literature frequently invokes direct (material) benefit models of mate choice, but we have little understanding on whether signals of direct benefits are intrinsically honest. I work on terrestrial breeding frogs (Pseudophryne species) where males advertise to females from nest sites of variable moisture, and where the wettest nest sites produce larger and more viable offspring. My earlier work showed that males call strongly from moist sites, and because males exchange water with their nest substrate, males may honestly advertise direct benefits (a quality nest site) if their hydration state is correlated with their call rate, or with their ability to fertilise terrestrial eggs. |
 | Dissociated breeding in turtle frogs | Most animal species show reproductive behaviours when their sex steroids are at maximum concentrations (associated breeding). Dissociated breeders however, exhibit reproductive behaviours when their gonads are regressed and sex steroid concentrations are low. Dissociated breeders offer an exciting opportunity to search for alternative factors that control mating behaviours. This project focuses on the bizarre Turtle Frog from Western Australia, where males court females in spring, yet mate underground in autumn. We are measuring a variety of physiological and environmental characteristics in reproductive and non-reproductive individuals to seek to understand what drives this peculiar mating strategy. |
 | Effects of global warming on reptiles with temperature-dependent sex determination| My research in New Zealand focused on the threatened Gunther’s tuatara (Sphenodon guntheri) – integrating field and laboratory studies to understand how local variation in nest temperatures on a small oceanic island affects phenotypic expression in hatchlings, including their sex I used this information to model the dynamics of this population under various projections of global warming, using landscape-based physiological models to predicting hatchling sex ratios. We are now using a similar approach to predict the sex ratios of marine turtles nesting at rookeries in Western Australia. |
Funding Received
2009-12 ARC Linkage (with the DEC and Perth Zoo)
2008 Faculty Start-up Grant
2008 Australian Geographic Society
2007 UWA Small Grant
2005-7 ARC Discovery (APD Fellowship)
2002 Journal of Experimental Biology Travelling Fellowship
2000 Royal Society (London) Banks Alecto Fellowship
External Collaborators
Michael Kearney and Warren Porter| On the application of mechanistic models for predicting species distributions
Nicola Nelson | On sex determination in tuatara
Roger Seymour | On the respiration of amphibian embryos
Peter Frappell | On the enegetics of frog acoustic signals
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