ProfessorMatthew Symonds

2019 - Associate Professor, Deakin University, School of Life and
Environmental Sciences

2015 - Senior Lecturer, Deakin University, School of Life and Environmental
Sciences

2010 - 2014 Lecturer, Deakin University, School of Life and Environmental
Sciences

2005-2010 Research Fellow and Lecturer, University of Melbourne

2003-2005 Research Associate, James Cook University

2002 Research Fellow, University of Melbourne

2000-2001 Science Co-Ordinator, The Charles Darwin Trust

1996-2000 PhD, University of Cambridge

1995 MPhil, University of Nottingham

1991-1994 BA (Hons) Natural Sciences, University of Cambridge

I graduated as a zoologist with a BA(Hons) in Natural Sciences from the
University of Cambridge in 1994. I briefly dabbled in the world of population
genetics, doing a masters degree with Prof Bryan Clarke at the University of
Nottingham on the maintenance of prey polymorphisms due to frequency dependent
selection by avian predators. Heading back to Cambridge, I obtained my PhD
under the supervision of Dr Adrian Friday, looking at the effect of
phylogenetic accuracy on comparative studies, concentrating on life-history
evolution in mammals and, in particular, the order Insectivora. After
graduating in 2000 I worked as Science Co-ordinator for The Charles Darwin
Trust, before returning to research in 2002. I initially came to the
University of Melbourne for a year to work with Prof Mark Elgar on a Royal
Society Travelling Research Fellowship, looking at pheromone evolution in bark
beetles. I then spent two years (2003-2005) at James Cook University in
Townsville as an ARC Research Associate with Prof Chris Johnson, looking at
the macroecology of Australian land birds and in particular explaining
patterns of abundance and range size. I returned to the University of
Melbourne in 2005 to take up a ARC Postdoctoral Fellowship on pheromone
evolution in insects, and stayed there as a research fellow and lecturer until
November 2010 when I joined Deakin University as a Lecturer in Ecology, then
later becoming an Associate Professor in Evolutionary Ecology in 2019

For more about me and my research visit http://symondslab.wordpress.com

Research Groups
Wildlife and Conservation Biology

Behaviour, Ecology, Evolution and Ecophysiology

Centre for Integrative Ecology