2020 Laureate Profile: Professor Loeske Kruuk

 

Professor Loeske Kruuk 

Administering Organisation: The Australian National University 

Fellowship project summary: 

FL200100068: This project aims to determine the effects of changing environments on wild animal populations across Australia. By combining recent advances in genomic technology with a consortium of fourteen long-term studies of mammals, birds and reptiles, it aims to quantify the genetic basis of life-history variation and the potential for evolutionary adaptation in the wild. The project will generate a comprehensive understanding of the genetic consequences of environmental change, population decline, inbreeding and disease in natural environments. The expected benefits include a coordinated network for long-term wild animal studies in Australia, advanced quantitative skills training, and knowledge transfer for wildlife management and conservation.

Australian Research Council funding: $ 3,328,974.00

About Professor Loeske Kruuk 

Professor Loeske Kruuk is an evolutionary ecologist with a broad range of interests in how evolution works in natural populations, especially considering the role of genetics and environment in shaping life history differences between individuals in a population. 

She completed a PhD in population genetics at the University of Edinburgh, UK, finishing in 1997. A postdoc at the Universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh introduced Professor Kruuk to the potential of long-term studies of wild animal populations to explore a wide range of important questions about life history evolution, quantitative genetics and effects of climate change, and since then she has been involved in studies of a variety of wild mammal and bird species. In 2012, Professor Kruuk took up an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship at The Australian National University.

Professor Kruuk is currently an editor for Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, and has previously been on the editorial boards of Evolution, Journal of Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Proc Roy Soc B.

Find out more about Professor Kruuk’s research by visiting her profile page on The Australian National University website. 

For further information about this funding scheme, please visit the Australian Laureate Fellowships scheme page.
 

Image credit: The Australian National University