Emily Lake
I am undertaking an Honours Project under the supervision of Dr Matt Phillips, examining the timing of dispersal events of marsupials between Australia and New Guinea as well as the direction of the dispersal events with likelihood models for estimating ancestral biogeography.
Another aspect of my project probes the origins of Australia’s arid-adapted small mammals by comparing their evolution to the biogeographical changes seen in the plant fossil record. This questions whether these arid-adapted marsupials coevolved with the aridification of the Australian continent or if this adaptation occurred independently in areas not covered by Australia’s incomplete fossil record.
