Professor Ross Alford

Professor (Personal Chair) of Tropical Biology

MSc (Florida) PhD (Duke)

Research Interests

Professor Ross Alford is broadly interested in ecology, animal behaviour, conservation biology, and evolution. Most of his research is focused on the ecology, behaviour, and conservation biology of frogs and their larvae, although he and his postgraduate students and research associates also work on a variety of reptiles and on freshwater and marine invertebrates. Since the early 1990s he has been strongly involved in research aimed at understanding the problem of global amphibian declines and how to prevent and reverse them. This has included collaborative research in North and Central America, and extensive collaborations with many researchers throughout the world. Much of his present research is focused on understanding the complex host-pathogen relationships between frogs and the amphibian chytrid fungus, and how it is modified by individual behaviour, immune responses, and the assemblage of other microbes inhabiting frog skin.

Current Research Projects

• Research aimed at understanding the factors controlling the host-pathogen relationship between the amphibian chytrid fungus and frogs in and near the Australian Wet Tropics, including research on how the behaviour and physiology of individual frogs affect the probability of becoming infected and the outcomes of infections, how antimicrobial skin secretions affect vulnerability to chytridiomycosis, and most recently how the remainder of the microbial assemblage that inhabits frog skin affects the amphibian chytrid.

• A long-term experimental study examining how manipulations of top-level predators (varanid lizards) and mesopredators (skinks) affect the behaviour and abundance of spiders and invertebrates at lower trophic levels in a terrestrial food web.

• Research aimed at the practical problem of increasing the effectiveness of traps in controlling the introduced Cane Toad, Bufo marinus. We have been investigating the responses of toads to a variety of visual, olfactory, and acoustic signals that may attract them to traps.

• Basic research on the population, community, and evolutionary ecology of frogs and frog larvae that live near and in temporary aquatic habitats in savanna woodlands. Most recently, we have discovered that many species that exploit these habitats produce some clutches of eggs with highly variable volumes of yolk. This directly affects the growth and development rates of the resulting tadpoles, and appears to be a form of evolutionary “bet-hedging.”

Current and Recently Supervised Ph.D. Projects

• Skin microbiota of Wet Tropics frogs and their interactions with the amphibian chytrid fungus

• Factors producing morbidity and mortality in frogs infected with Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis

• Comparative analysis of factors affecting the vulnerability of frogs to chytridiomycosis

• Host-pathogen ecology of Australian rainforest frog tadpoles

• Population biology and behaviour of Australian microhylids and their interactions with the amphibian chytrid fungus

• Effects of top predator removal in terrestrial food webs

• Why does Chytridiomycosis drive some frog populations to extinction and not others? The effects of interspecific variation in host behaviour

• Ecological differences between rare and common species of microhylid frogs of the Wet Tropics biogeographic region

• Edible frog harvesting in Indonesia: evaluating its impact and ecological context

• The ecology of chytridiomycosis, an emerging infectious disease of Australian rainforest frogs.

Teaching

BZ3220/BZ5220

Rainforest Populations and Communities

ZL3211/ZL5211

Tropical Australian Herpetology

Selected publications

Manicom, C, Schwarzkopf, L, Alford, RA, and Schoener, TW. 2008. Self-made shelters protect spiders from predation: a field experiment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. 105(39):14903-14907.

Woodhams, D.C., R. A. Alford, C. J. Briggs, M. Johnson, and L. A. Rollins-Smith. 2008. Life-history trade-offs influence disease in changing climates: strategies of an amphibian pathogen. Ecology 89:1627-1639.

Alford,. R. A., K. S. Bradfield, and S. J. Richards. 2007. Global warming and amphibian losses. Nature 447:E3-E4. doi: 0.1038/nature05940

Lips, K.R., Brem, F., Brenes, R., Reeve, J.D., Alford, R. A., Voyles, J., Carey, C., Livo, L., Pessier, A.P., and J. P. Collins. 2006. Emerging infectious disease and the loss of biodiversity in a Neotropical amphibian community. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 103:3165-3170.

Rachowicz, L.R., Hero, J-M., Alford, R. A., Morgan, J. A. T. Vredenburg, V. A., Collins, J. P., Taylor, J. W., and Briggs, C. J. 2005. The novel and endemic pathogen hypotheses: competing explanations for the origin of emerging diseases of wildlife. Conservation Biology 19:1441-1448.

Kellner, J., and R. A. Alford. 2003. The ontogeny of fluctuating asymmetry. American Naturalist 161:931-947.

Alford, R. A., P. M. Dixon, and J. H. K. Pechmann. 2001. Global amphibian population declines. Nature 412:499-500.

Alford, R. A., and S. J. Richards. 1999. Global amphibian declines: a problem in applied ecology. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 30:133-165.

Alford, R. A., and G. D. Jackson. 1993. Do cephalopods and the larvae of many taxa grow asymptotically? American Naturalist 141:717-728.

Alford, R. A. 1989. Variation in predator phenology affects predator performance and prey community composition. Ecology 70:206-219.

Alford, R. A., and R. N. Harris. 1988. Effects of larval growth history on anuran metamorphosis. American Naturalist 131:91-106.

Alford, R. A., and H. M. Wilbur. 1985. Priority effects in experimental pond communities: competition between Bufo and Rana. Ecology 66:1097-1105.

FULL PUBLICATION LIST

Australian Herpetological Directory

Contact Details

Professor Ross Alford

Campus: Townsville

Telephone: +61 7 4781 4732

Fax: +61 7 4725 1570

Mobile: +61 4 2712 2937

Email: Ross.Alford@jcu.edu.au