Featured White Evolutionary Lab researcher: Hugh tests the limits of toad invasion in Australia

Hugh and an experimental cane toad

Invasive cane toads are well-known for their deleterious effects on wildlife in Australia: most native animals that consume cane toads die as a result of the cane toad toxin, and the cane toads themselves consume many species of small native animals. This is especially a concern for some of Australia's more endangered animals, such as the carnivorous spotted-tail quoll, and consequently, any means of predicting where the toads are going, and how fast they are heading there, is important for conservation scientists.

The locomotion test involves swimming in fast-flowing water

Portrait of an experimental cane toad - they have beautiful eyes!

Cane toads (Chaunus [Bufo] marinus) were first introduced into Australia in 1935-1937 along a 1200 km stretch of north east Australia. Now, these animals cover up to 1.2 million square km of north east Australia (Urban et al., 2007). This rapid spread over such a wide area, however, has only occurred in the warmer (tropical) parts of Australia: to the south, cane toads only extend as far as the upper regions of New South Wales.

Previous research suggested that cane toads were physiologically limited in their ability to invade the more temperate regions of Australia (such as New South Wales and further south), because the colder temperatures presented a physiological barrier to cane toad invasion. There is now evidence, however, of a slow but gradual creep of the southern cane toad invasion front headed further south.

This poses an interesting, two-part question, and one that Hugh in the White Evolutionary lab of The University of Queensland is researching:

1. Is this southern invasion slower because cane toads are reaching limitations on their tolerance of colder temperatures, and as such the physiological barrier to cane toads will be upheld? 
2. Is this a sign of cane toads physiologically adapting to colder temperatures, and the colder regions of Australia no longer present a barrier to the invasion front?

Hugh is in the final stages of his Honours research that asks these questions. What his research entails is looking for whether there are differences in the energetic costs (metabolic rate) associated with locomotion (as a proxy for physiological performance) in cold and warm conditions between a northern population of adult toads (from Cairns), and a southern population of adult toads (from Ballina and Yamba in New South Wales).

Hugh's research will shed some light in determining whether cane toad physiology in the southern population is better suited to cold temperatures, and ultimately, are toads evolving to tolerate colder temperatures and are thus shifting the invasion front progressively more south. Let's hope for Australia's wildlife that Hugh finds the answer is no!

How I overcome writers block

It's all in my head but...

I’ve found that while writing my thesis I tend to stop in the face of writer’s block and procrastinate an awful lot thereafter. This bothers me, as I am pushing onto my thesis review in only a few weeks, and I can’t seem to just sit down and do focused writing.

 As productive as hitting your head on a brick wall

In the past few days, however, I have found a way out of my writing “dead zone”, and I’ll share with you three thought-processes I’ve employed to drag my motivation kicking and screaming into a more productive place.

• Write a template for a paragraph

 I often find that I know what I want to say, but I don’t know the details. By writing a template up of a paragraph, sentence by sentence, I find that my writing takes on a more logical progression.

Then, when I have the details I need, I can literally “fill in the blanks”. An example template: It is common practice to….. However, this method is out-dated because it is more effective to……. Previous research in this area is scarce, due to ……………, however, ………… The present study examines the benefits of using a ……… approach, which will increase the………… of ………………..

• Train of thought

 If you can read a heap of relevant papers, take useful notes you keep handy, and know exactly what you want to say, good stuff. I am never in that position: I rarely find my notes, I always read off-topic, and until I get my thoughts down on a page, I have no idea what I want to write about. 

To kick-start myself to write, I just sit down and write whatever comes to my head. It’s easier to work with words on a page than to imagine how you will structure your sentences before you write. Which leads me to my next point:

• You don’t have to commit to the words on the page (and realise that what you write will be crap)

The train-of-thought has made words appear on your page. Well done! Then you read what you have just written and……… it is terrible. There is little logic, and most of it is repetitive. There are spelling and grammatical errors everywhere. 

That’s ok, because now you have words on the page, you can trim them down, use a thesaurus to make a few words sound fancy and then just add a few references! Done! At best, you may get a 200 word paragraph from a 1000 word burst of writing.

So writing is a creative process, get those creative juices flowing onto the page in front of you and you’ll probably surprise yourself.

I’ll also share some great blogs I follow that helps (and motivates) me with my academic writing: 

The Thesis Whisperer
The Three Month Thesis
GradHacker
To Do: Dissertation