Dan Rosauer
PhD Candidate in the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of New South Wales.
I am based at the Centre for Plant Biodiversity Research, but is currently a visitor in the School of Botany and Zoology at ANU.
Research & Professional Interests
PhD
My PhD is about the spatial measurement of biodiversity. While traditional measures of biodiversity use species as their basic unit, measures of phylogenetic diversity take account of the evolutionary relationships between taxa. They use measures of evolutionary difference based on genetic or morphological data, to reflect the unique contribution of each species to overall diversity.
My research uses phylogenies for a diverse selection of Australian plant and animal taxa, combined with continent wide species location datasets. It applies and builds on existing diversity measures to develop robust spatial measures suitable for wider application, and to investigate the geography of evolutionary processes within and between the different taxon groups.
For each taxon group (such as a family or genus) I will map an estimate of phylogenetic diversity across Australia. I will look for patterns in phylogenetic diversity within and between taxonomic groups, and seek to quantify and minimise sources of uncertainty in the spatial measurement of phylogenetic diversity.
Biodiversity Spatial Information Management
Creation and management of large species location datasets for spatial analysis. Mapping and analysis of species distributions involves fascinating and frustrating challenges including:
- deriving meaningful results from changing and inconsistent taxonomy
- huge variability in sampling density and spatial precision
- efficient organisation of large volumes of species location and taxonomic data to make it easily applicable to questions of conservation of biogeography
- automated data exchange to build of the most authoritative and current distribution and taxonomic information
- deriving meaningful results from changing and inconsistent taxonomy
- developing tools for spatial analysis and presentation of species location information, such as those listed below
Related Work
Australian Natural Heritage Assessment Tool - used in the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage & the Arts to map patterns of endemism and species richness in the Australian biota, and to produce regional biodiversity reports
Biodiversity Analysis Tool - a web-based tool for biogeographic analysis of online specimen collections
Biodiverse - a web based research tool for biogeographic analysis of specimen collections, developed at UNSW
For further detail and publications see my UNSW home page