DrJesse M. Rubenstein

I am a quantitative ecologist specialising in avian movement ecology, wildlife disease and biosecurity. As part of the AviFluMap project in Marcel Klaassen’s group, I model how wild waterbirds and seabirds move across Australia and what this means for the spread of high pathogenicity avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1. This work aims to understand how the virus could spread through the movements and interactions of wild bird communities, identify the species and regions at greatest risk, and inform practical strategies for surveillance and mitigation.

I draw on spatial modelling, species distribution models, Bayesian and hierarchical statistics and citizen science to turn large tracking and surveillance datasets into results that wildlife managers and policy makers can use. Citizen science is a particular passion of mine. Having used eBird since 2009, and in my research for over a decade, I am keen to combine eBird and other citizen science data with tracking and surveillance data to better understand bird distributions, movements and disease risk at continental scales.

Before joining Deakin, I completed a PhD at Lincoln University, New Zealand, on biosecurity and invasion biology in the crop seed industry, focusing on the movement of weed seeds through the global seed trade and on emerging trends in herbicide resistant weeds affecting the sector. This work was carried out in close collaboration with government agencies, international seed testing authorities and industry to support evidence based biosecurity decisions.

I also hold master’s degrees in Geographic Information Science (University at Buffalo) and Environmental Science (Rochester Institute of Technology), where I combined habitat suitability models with eBird data to map habitat for declining songbirds such as the Golden-winged Warbler. My earlier roles include a faculty appointment teaching GIS and eBird workshops at the University of Connecticut, and leading avian surveys in Ecuador’s cloud forests that contributed to a landmark rights of nature case halting mining at Los Cedros Biological Reserve.