Past students

Dr Manuel Lequerica Tamara

PhD

Manuel is an ecologist with a diverse range of experiences in ecological research and consulting. He earned his undergraduate degree from Universidad de Los Andes in Colombia in 2012, where he worked on ecological questions such as the successional process of high-Andean forests, the seed dispersal of oilbirds (Steatornis caripensis), and the reintroduction of woolly monkeys (Lagothrix lagothricha). After completing his degree, Manuel pursued his academic career in Australia, starting with a MAgr and MSc at The University of Sydney in 2013.

During his MAgr, supervised by Professors Alan Randall and Tiho Ancev, Manuel studied the economic efficiency of upgrades in sewerage treatment plants in NSW. Upon completion, he joined the Integrative Ecology Lab and started his MSc, supervised by Professor Dieter Hochuli, Dr. Caragh Threlfall, and Associate Professor Tanya Latty. His MSc research focused on the relationships between urbanisation and insect community diversity and composition in Sydney. In 2018, he started his PhD under the same supervisory team, which focused on the ecology and behaviour of hover flies in urban greenspaces. He completed his PhD in 2023.

Since 2020, Manuel has been working as an ecological consultant at AMBS Ecology and Heritage. In this role, he is responsible for executing ecological impact assessments, flora and fauna management plans, and biodiversity surveys and monitoring. Manuel continues to maintain his association with the Integrative Ecology Lab as a research assistant, where he participates in the supervision of honours students, writing and publishing manuscripts, and assisting in many of the lab’s projects.

Dr Matthew Hall

PhD

Matthew’s research focuses on wildlife survives in urban environments. Currently he is researching the mechanisms enabling the Australian Brush-turkey (Alectura lathami), a recent urban colonising bird, to thrive in the hostile urban landscape. This has included documenting behavioural and distributional changes, and the ecosystem engineering impacts of the species. He is also interested utilising citizen science for ecological research and is an administrator of the Big City Birds project, which collects community observations of urban bird species and their behaviours.

Dr Ryan Keith

PhD

Ryan is a passionate educator and social-ecological scientist. His PhD research focused on how urban children connect with nature. Ryan and Dieter together created the online course ‘Science of Australia’s Deadly Animals’ (OLET1664).

Dr Caitlyn Forster

PhD

Caitlyn’s research looks into how bees choose flowers, using concepts from behavioural economics, including the commonly used marketing trick, the Decoy Effect. She also works on how we can communicate science effectively using comics, and is a collaborator on the Nearby Nature Project. Currently she coordinates the Biology of Insects course.