FrogSong

Meet the team!

Slade Allen-Ankins is a postdoctoral research fellow at James Cook University, Townsville. He is primarily interested in using passive acoustic monitoring to understand calling patterns in frog and bird communities and using machine learning methods for detecting calls in long-duration recordings. Before studying frog calls, he received a BSc in Environmental Management & Ecology from La Trobe University, where he studied the impacts of turbidity on feeding in juvenile Murray cod and temperature-dependent performance in native blackfish.

Lin Schwarzkopf is a professor at James Cook University, Townsville. Her research examines broad ecological and evolutionary questions, including applied problems. She takes an integrative approach, using a combination of controlled experiments and observational studies to test hypotheses. Much of her research has used reptiles and amphibians as model systems, but she is broadly interested in a variety of groups.

Bernd Meyer is a professor at Monash University, Melbourne, working on data-intensive computational ecology. He develops mathematical and computational models for the interactions of organisms with their environment, mostly focussing on the collective behaviour of social insects, such as bees and ants. How these self-organised “super-organisms” coordinate their actions remains a fascinating enigma. Bernd also works on AI-based methods for monitoring animal activity as the basis for ecosystem monitoring and for automating experiments. Learn more on Bernd’s homepage.

Sheryn Brodie is a PhD student at James Cook University, Townsville. She is interested in the use of environmental sound recordings to research and monitor vocal species in their natural habitats. For her PhD, she is researching the chorusing behaviour of communities of frogs in a tropical savanna habitat in Australia using recordings at frog breeding sites.