Recent graduations: Caroline Delaisse & Timm Dobert

Congratulations to Caroline Delaisse and Timm Dobert!

As we close in on the end of 2015, two of the Ecosystem Change Ecology team students have successfully graduated from the University of Western Australia.

Caroline Delaisse completed her BSc(Hons) entitled “Understanding processes influencing seed germination in Rubus anglocandicans to improve weed invasion management” with the School of Plant Biology at the University of Western Australia and CSIRO Land and Water.  Caroline was supervised by Bruce Webber and Pieter Poot.  Caroline is currently busy converting her thesis into two publications.

Timm Dobert completed his PhD entitled “The influence of logging on understorey plant communities in tropical lowland rainforest in Borneo” at the School of Animal Biology at the University of Western Australia and with CSIRO Land and Water.  Timm was supervised by Raphael Didham, Bruce Webber and Katharine Dickinson and his research was conducted as part of the Stability of Altered Forest Ecosystems (SAFE) project in Sabah.  Timm examined the level of exotic plant invasions and variation in functional traits and evolutionary relatedness across a logging-intensity gradient from primary to repeatedly logged forests. His results showed that logging facilitates the invasion of exotic plants, albeit at currently low levels, and that a strong logging signal persists in the functional and phylogenetic structure of understorey plant communities. These findings emphasise the complexity of logging-induced impacts, over and above species diversity, with significant implications for conservation management of modified tropical landscapes. You can continue to follow Timm’s publications and future career via his ResearchGate page.