News

Luke was recently honoured to be the Guest Speaker at the Faculty of Science graduation ceremony at the Royal Exhibition Building. He had a lot of fun crafting a speech that used fire and "heat" as a way to think about making positive change in the world. Drawing on his own experiences in science, he encouraged graduates to use their new …

In 2025, Luke Kelly was hosted on sabbatical by the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at University of California, Los Angeles. During this time, he visited areas in and around Los Angeles impacted by recent wildfires, alongside Morgan Tingley from UCLA, local ecologists and a writer from the New York Times Magazine. A thoughtful piece by Brooke Jarvis reflects on fire, …

How does pyrodiversity shape small mammal populations? In a new study in Journal of Applied Ecology, Julianna Santos, Holly Sitters and Luke Kelly explore how fire mosaics influence both the abundance and genetic diversity of small mammals in semi-arid Australia. Using field surveys and genome-wide SNPs for mallee ningaui and Bolam's mouse, Julianna and team found species-specific responses to fire patterns. Mallee …

What are the evolutionary implications of changes in fire regimes for animals? Luke Kelly and colleagues explore this in their new paper in Global Change Biology. They build on a recent plant-focused application of the phenotype–environment mismatch concept, extending it to animals to understand the evolutionary and ecological consequences of altered fire regimes. Mismatches are primarily studied in the context of climate-driven changes, …

Luke Kelly and colleagues explore the evolutionary consequences of changing fire regimes in their new paper in Trends in Ecology and Evolution. As fire patterns shift across the globe, plant populations need to keep up. Luke and team show that variation in fire-related traits – such as resprouting, serotiny, and bark thickness – is widespread within plant species. This intraspecific variation provides …

Ella Plumanns Pouton, Luke Kelly and team have a new paper on the timing of fires and plant species occurrence in the soil seedbank, in Journal of Applied Ecology. Ella led a team that sampled the soil seedbank across 57 sites that represent a range of fire frequencies (1–9 fires in 81 years) and time since fire (1–81 years). And through a 15-month germination experiment, …

Ella Plumanns Pouton, Luke Kelly and team have a new paper on using plant functional types to predict the influence of fire on species relative abundance – published in Biological Conservation. Ella and team first brought together a wealth of knowledge on the traits that plant species exhibit in response to fire, including whether or not they are stimulated to resprout …

Eliza Thompson, Luke Kelly and Rod Keenan have a new paper on nest boxes and animal conservation in the journal Forest Ecology and Management. Nest boxes are widely used to supplement natural tree cavities used by fauna, particularly in “working lands” where large, old trees are cleared or harvested. Eliza led a systematic review to provide a global overview of the scientific …