You will have likely seen in the news recently about the ‘de-extinction of the dire wolf’, a canid species which went extinct over ten thousand years ago. Using gene editing techniques and gray wolves, Colossal Biosciences – a for-profit biotechnology company based in Dallas, Texas – claim to have restored the lost megafauna through the production of three genetically-modified wolf pups. To do this, their scientists edited a literal handful (14) genes based on those loosely identified as ‘under positive selection’ in an ancient dire wolf genome. As expected, there are several technicalities which have not been adequately covered by the resultant media fanfare (e.g., that dire wolves are equally close in evolutionary distance to coyotes, dholes and jackals as they are gray wolves). The associated pre-print (i.e., yet-to-be-peer-reviewed), featuring fantasy-writer-but-not-scientist George R. R. Martin, was published on April 11th 2025, resulting in more direct scrutiny by the scientific community.
Continue readingConservation
How destabilization of climate threatens aquatic life in a biodiversity hotspot
In more fishy news, this week the latest (and last!) chapter of my PhD, describing how millions of years of climatic stability have allowed isolated and divergent lineages of pygmy perches to persist, was published (Open Access) in Heredity. It covers population divergence, phylogenetic relationships (including estimation of divergence times), species delimitation and projections of species distributions from the past (up to three million years ago) into the future (up to 2100). Some highlights include:
Continue readingFishy friends making the news
Bringing back the southern pygmy perch
You may recall (some months back), that I published a research paper describing the successful reintroduction of a threatened freshwater fish, the southern pygmy perch, into wetlands around Bendigo, Victoria. This work has been extremely rewarding for a lot of reasons: not just for the positive conservation outcomes for a threatened (and underappreciated!) species but also for the incredible community engagement it involved. Without the help of local volunteers, restoration efforts of this scale would not be possible and it’s been amazing to see how the community has responded. I really don’t think I can underestimate how invigorating it is to see the general public commit to direct conservation action and to be able to see the outcomes of their efforts over a few years.
Continue readingReviving rivers: a community-led tale of fish conservation
Communities and conservation
When I was younger, I used to love visiting our local creek: it was a beautiful spot of nature a short walk from home. On a couple occasions, my Dad took me to the creek to catch yabbies – for a suburban kid, it was one of the few times I actually held and interacted with wild biodiversity, and helped foster my love for conservation and inquiry into biology. In the late 2000s to early 2010s, a likely combination of local pollution and extensive drought extirpated the yabbies from the creek – I would never see one in that creek again. I was devastated for the local loss of a fascinating creature, and the connection to nature it represented, but felt powerless to remedy the situation. To my knowledge, there are still no yabbies in that creek.
Continue readingValidating vulnerability: ground-truthing projections from genomic offsets
How can we predict which species will adapt to climate change?
Across the globe, threatened species are already becoming impacted by the effects of climate change. While we understand many of the characteristics that make a species particularly vulnerable to climate change – those with small ranges, fragmented populations, or long lifespans, for example – predicting the capacity of a given species to respond remains a challenge. Developing analytical approaches and science-based frameworks to predict adaptive capacity in all species is a critical step forward for conservation management.
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The G-cat 