Annual General Meeting of the Australian Society of Herpetologists

 

Registration

Registration is open on https://www.trybooking.com/CZRND

Early bird prices are until April 30th 2025.

 

Abstracts

Please submit abstracts to https://forms.office.com/r/AxxL85t6C6 before midnight May 31st 2025.

 

The Venue

The Coffs Harbour Adventure Centre provides space and accommodation for delegates to meet and present during our 4-day conference. Conference check-in opens the morning of Tuesday 17th June starting with midday lunch and talks from 1pm. The conference will wrap up at midday on Friday 20th June.

There is parking at the conference venue.

Breakfast, lunch, and dinner will be provided daily and a visiting coffee cart will be available during the morning.  A bar will be serving drinks during the evening.

Please note that attendees can uber or taxi the short distance from the airport to the venue.


Carers

Childcare is available at the conference for a limited number of children. Please contact ASH2025@une.edu.au to confirm the age and number of children you wish to bring.

Accommodation

Accommodation options include dormitories with five bunks per room and a shared bathroom (n = 135 available), we will provide an electronic sign up sheet so you can bunk with buddies. Alternatively, there is a camping area available for BYO tents. Camp sites are a short walk in from the venue and not accessible to vehicles. There will be showers and toilets available to campers. Delegates are also welcome to find their own accommodation nearby.

 

Plenary Speakers


Distinguished Professor Lin Schwarzkopf (James Cook University)

Distinguished Professor Lin Schwarzkopf is an ecologist at James Cook University. She earned her PhD from the University of Sydney in 1991 and has been a professor at JCU since 2012. Her research encompasses broad ecological and evolutionary questions, often adopting an integrative approach to address applied problems. Her work on the impact on biodiversity of different grazing strategies demonstrated that economically sustainable practices can enhance biodiversity, fostering collaboration between conservationists and graziers. Contributing to integrated pest management strategies, she designed traps for adult cane toads, now available commercially, and co-developed a humane toxin to dispose of them. She began using acoustics as a method to attract and trap toads, and this grew into a wider interest in using environmental sound in ecology.  She helped establish the Australian Acoustic Observatory, a country-wide network of 250 acoustic sensors, intended to monitor biodiversity.  Recently, she has been focussing her efforts on enabling monitoring using this data.

Distinguished Professor Arthur Georges (University of Canberra)

Professor Arthur Georges is an ecologist and herpetologist whose research interests lie in the evolution, ecology and systematics of Australian reptiles.

A fundamental interest in these fascinating animals takes him into the field and the laboratory to learn more of their biology and to apply what he has learned in solving contemporary challenges for their conservation.

Dr Leonie Valentine (World Wide Fund for Nature)

Dr Leonie Valentine is a conservation scientist and wildlife biologist who is committed to innovating, implementing, and supporting positive conservation change.  She leads the Species Program with the World Wide Fund for Nature - Australia, adopting an inclusive conservation approach to deliver a diverse portfolio of conservation projects throughout Australia and the Asia-Pacific region. Leonie specialises in designing and conducting research projects, managing staff and students, working with donors and strategically developing and delivering complex conservation programs with multiple stakeholders. Leonie loves conservation science, deep thinking and working collaboratively to find solutions to conservation challenges. She also loves watching wildlife for the sheer joy it brings - especially when that experience is shared with her daughter.

Associate Professor Daniel Noble (Australian National University)

Daniel Noble is an ARC Future Fellow and Associate Professor at The Australian National University. Dan is an Evolutionary / Physiological Ecologist specialising in understanding how organisms, mainly lizards, respond to environmental change and the impact such change has on survival and reproduction. He has a keen interest in meta-analysis, evidence synthesis, biostatistics, open science and transparency. He is currently the Chair (2024) for the EcoEvoRxiv preprint service and was one of its original founding members. Dan did his BSc and MSc at the University of Guelph (Canada) followed by a PhD with Martin Whiting at Macquarie University (Australia). He then won an ARC DECRA fellowship to work with Shinichi Nakagawa at the University of New South Wales (Australia) before taking up a position at The Australian National University (Australia) in 2019.

Professor Mike Kearney (University of Melbourne)

Mike is currently a Professor and ARC Laureate Fellow in the School of BioSciences at The University of Melbourne. A childhood obsession with natural history (especially of snakes and lizards) led him to become an ecologist. His research is focused on ways to connect what we can measure about an organism’s functional traits with what we can measure about their environments and how traits and environments change though space and time to affect distribution and abundance. From a theoretical point of view, this has led him to develop the field of ‘mechanistic niche modelling’ (and the associated software package NicheMapR), which integrates microclimate modelling, biophysical ecology and metabolic theory. His empirical work focuses on ecophysiology, life cycles and life histories, and the evolution of parthenogenesis. He does applied work in climate change, conservation and pest management and maintains his passion for natural history and fieldwork.

 

 Memoranda

  •          Murray Littlejohn

  •          Rick Longmore

 

Pride Drinks and Catwalk

To celebrate the diversity in our rainbow family of ASH members we will be hosting a fashion parade which you are invited to enter. Bring your costume for one of the following categories:

  •         Most impressive conference t-shirt

  •         Best herp themed accessories

  •         Most Queer

  •         Most inspired Tights – judged by Glenn Shea

 

ASH Quiz

Join Glenn Shea’s tights in the ASH famous Quiz night. Start studying.

 

Postgrad advice – Talk and panel session

  •          Academic – Simon Clulow. University of Canberra.

  •          Government – Zoe Ross. Queensland Department of Environment, Tourism, Science, and Innovation.

  •          Consultant – TBA

  •          NGO – Eridani Mulder. Australian Wildlife Conservancy.

 

Photo competition (Information on how to enter coming soon!)

  •          Best overall photo

  •          Best phone photo

  •          Herpers in action

  •          Best AI generated photo

Prizes

Students are in the running for the following awards:

  • Best Undergraduate/Honours talk

  • Best Masters /HDR talk

  • Best Speed talk

  • Best Poster

 

Travel Grants

Available https://forms.office.com/r/sje5Mj7AeV until midnight 21st April 2025.

 

Sponsors

The University of New England is a gold sponsor.

Please get in touch if you would like to sponsor this event

 

Final party themed night – Rubik’s cube to rainbow

Please join us for the final night (Thursday) of the conference in your Rubik’s cube attire. Come dressed in as many different coloured items as you can (every colour is welcome! yellow sock, purple pants, blue shirt, pink scarf, silver suit) and your goal is to swap clothes with your Rubik’s cube colleagues until you are one solid colour. We will then take a photograph of an ASH rainbow to celebrate our love of all things diverse and gay.

Entertainment will be provided by the ASH famous Hoop Snakes followed by a pumping dance floor to provide those hard and herpy beats.