People

Meet the Team

Principle Investigator

Daniel Noble

Associate Professordaniel.noble@anu.edu.au

Dan is currently an ARC Future Fellow (2023–2027) and Associate Professor at the ANU. Dan moved from UNSW Sydney where he was an ARC DECRA fellow in 2019 to start his lab group up.

He completed his PhD at Macquarie University in Sydney after having done an MSc and BSc at the University of Guelph, Canada.

Find out more about Dan's research by visiting our Research page

PhD Students

Naomi Laven

(2023 – Present)
I’ve moved to Canberra after an undergrad, honours and lots of field assistant work in the Australian tropics. My research here at ANU will focus on the implications of sex-reversal in a local alpine skink species, including looking at the ways sexual phenotypes or genotypes might impact behaviour, cognition, and mating traits. Understanding how sex-reversal impacts fitness is vital for predicting the future directions of populations prone to this phenomenon

Dalton Leibold

(2022-Present)
Evolutionary ecologist by passion, physiologist by profession. I use reptiles as a system for identifying relationships between the environment, physiological processes, and fitness and all of its associated phenotypes. During my PhD I aim testing the programmatic effects of early-life experiences (i.e., maternal effects and the developmental environment) on physiological biomarkers of fitness (mitochondrial function, oxidative stress, and DNA damage), life-history tradeoffs, and lifetime reproductive success.

Joel Treutlein

Co-advised with Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick (2024-Present)
Joel is interested in the consequences of future heatwave trends on ecosystems given carbon emission targets. His research interests span multiple disciplines and combine high-resolution climate modelling with ecological analyses such as the use of microclimate and biophysical models. The primary objective of his work is to determine how heatwaves are changing at an ecologically-relevant fine-scale, and subsequently their predicted ecological impacts.

Pablo Recio

(2022-2025)
My research focuses mainly on the evolution of animal behaviour, using reptiles as a model species. During my PhD I aim to unravel how maternal condition together with early environment affect cognitive abilities of the delicate skink. I am highly skilled at catching lizards with a fishing rod. You can find out more about my research here.

MSc/Honours Students

Amelia Peardon

2024-2025
Amelia is exploring new approaches to measuring thermal load sensitivity for cells to overcome challanges in applying these methods in vertebrates

Aidan Lowe

2024-2025
Aidan is looking at how mito-nuclear discordance impacts mitochondrial function in grasshoppers and flour beetles

Niamh O'Kelly

2025-2026
Niamh is co-advised by Bernd Gruber at UC. She's working on developing eDNA sampling protocols for detecting the critically endangered Canberra Earless Dragon

Xingyi Xiu

2023-2024
Xingyi just finished doing a big meta-analysis on microplastic impacts on aquatic organisms. Now time to publish!

Past Postdoctoral Researchers

Dr. Patrice Pottier

(2024-2025)
I’m an evolutionary ecologist exploring how rapid environmental change shapes the physiology, life-history, and behaviour of ectothermic animals. My interests are broad, and I use a combination of evidence synthesis, comparative analyses, and laboratory experiments to address exciting questions in a broad range of organisms. Patrice is now working with Fredrik Jutfelt at Gothenburg University, Sweden

Dr. Ondi Crino

(2020-2022)
Ondi was a postdoctoral researcher working on early environmental effects on physiology and is now running her own lab at Flinder’s University!

Dr. Kris Wild

(2022-2023)
Microclimate modeller extraordinaireand sex-reversal whisperer. Kris is now doing a postdoctoral fellowship with Mike Kearney at the University of Melbourne.

Dr. Essie Rodgers