Natalie is currently a PhD candidate, working with the Australian Antarctic Division. Her honours research focused on marsupial cognition and how marsupials respond behaviourally to introduced predators. Using classical conditioning and the quokka (Setonix brachyurus) as a model species her aim was to develop training techniques that give captive-reared animals appropriate skills to cope with introduced predators after reintroduction in to the wild.
After a lengthy break from science to concentrate on documentary making, Natalie became interested in the development of minimally invasive and non-invasive methods for revealing the biology of rare or elusive species. This in turn led to an interest in the rapidly progressing fields of molecular ecology and population genetics.
The focus of her PhD research is to develop nuclear genetic markers, to investigate population structure, distribution and contemporary abundance of the eastern and western breeding populations of Australian humpback whales. Natalie is also interested if humpback whale populations, now recovering from the intensive whaling that occurred throughout most of the 20th century, display biased sex ratios as predicted by evolutionary theory and displayed by other fluctuating mammalian populations.
Natalie will work as part of one of the small boat teams with the Antarctic Whale Expeditions. Her primary roles will be to record data, and whale photo-identification.
