Want more brain power in your life? I sure do, so I’m super pleased to announce that we found out that our Australian Research Council Discovery Project grant was funded last week! The project title is: Plastic brains: Neural adaptations to changing environments in reptiles, and we have three years of funding to complete the project.
BUT ALICE, I may hear you ask, these are not fish? No, you are quite correct, these are not fish (or just very highly derived fish), but I’m really interested in trying to understand brain evolution in all of the so-called “lower” vertebrates and particularly see how they change over major environmental shifts.
The project is really the “brain child” of the incredible Jenna Crowe-Riddell (La Trobe) and I’m stoked to be involved (we are pictured above enjoying some home-grown veggies in the sunshine). I’m also looking forward to working with all of our co-investigators Mike Lee (Flinders), Shaun Collin (La Trobe), Kate Sanders (University of Adelaide) and Alison Davis-Rabosky (University of Michigan).
We’ll be exploring macroevolutionary and ontogenetic patterns of brain evolution in reptiles, quantifying neuronal densities, and investigating the effects of temperature on brain development with a focus on some key Australian radiations such as elapids (snakes) and agamids (dragon lizards).
They may not be fish, but I’m very excited to investigate how the brains of Aussie snakes and lizards have evolved in response to past and ongoing environmental change using some cool techniques like DiceCT (for imaging soft tissue anatomy), Geometric Morphometrics (to capture complex shape) and some cool phylogenetic analyses courtesy of the phylo master (Mike).
Commiserations to all who missed out on DP grants this round. With a success rate consistently lower than 20% there are many fantastic and worthy projects that fail to secure funding. Total funding (in real terms, not due to inflation) is the lowest in years this round (at least the last 8 years, see graph on left below). I think Australia can, and needs to do better in funding more research and development to keep up with other (particularly OECD) countries. Additionally, as a female EMCR lead investigator (red line in graph on the right), Jenna is here kicking the trend of most funding being awarded to male level E Professors (aqua line) and so this effort is particularly impressive! Exciting times ahead for Jenna and for reptile brains!
Dr Alice Clement 