Dr Andrew Storfer

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Fulbright Senior Scholar

Media profile

As highlighted by the U.S. National Research Council, two "grand challenges in environmental sciences" for the 21st Century are understanding the ecology and evolution of infectious diseases and understanding the causes and consequences of the Earth's diminishing biodiversity.

Dr Andrew Storfer, Associate Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at Washington State University, has won a Fulbright Senior Scholarship from the Australian-American Fulbright Commission and will undertake research at James Cook University in Queensland and University of Tasmania in Hobart. Dr Storfer will spend 12 months in Australia from August 2008.

Dr Storfer’s project, Genetics of Recolonization: The Recovery of Frog Populations Following an Epidemic, is at the interface of the two challenges recognized by the U.S. National Research Council: understanding the ecology and evolution of infectious diseases and understanding the causes and consequences of the Earth's diminishing biodiversity.

“Genetics of Recolonization..” will be a comparative study of the population genetic dynamics of amphibians that have declined due to an emerging infectious disease. Amphibians are recognized as a marquee example of a global biodiversity loss, with nearly 40% of all amphibian taxa threatened with extinction.

Dr Storfer explains that what is particularly concerning is that many of these declines have occurred in protected parks and reserves, and Australia is an epicenter of these "enigmatic" declines.

“Once a mystery, we now know that population losses and extinctions in Queensland have most likely resulted from an emerging disease caused by the chytrid fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis. This fungus has since been implicated in amphibian die-offs and declines worldwide, but an extremely comprehensive dataset of population trends has been obtained in North Queensland, Australia. Nearly 50% of the frogs in the Australian wet tropics are endemic, and long term demographic, behavioural and physiological data now exist for several of these species.”

“I will focus on three endemic sister taxa in the genus Litoria that have had varied responses to infections by the chytrid fungus in North Queensland, Australia,” Dr Storfer said.

Dr Storfer earned his PhD in Biological Sciences from the University of Kentucky and his work in this area has been recgonised with the Warder Clyde Allee Award ( best student paper), Animal Behavior Society in 1997 and the Herpetologist's League Award for Graduate Research in 1996. He also conducted his postdoctoral work at Arizona State University under the prestigious Maytag Postdoctoral Fellowship. Since then, he has gone on to author more than 40 peer-reviewed scientific publications. His lab currently focuses on conservation and landscape genetics of amphibians, as well as the evolutionary ecology of amphibian diseases.