Prof Trent Garner

Broadly speaking, my research has always contrasted biological conflicts with compatibilities. My previous research interests include polyandrous mating systems, how they affect population genetic structure, and how demography affects mate choice. More recently I’ve mostly worked on host/parasite relationships; I am interested in determining how parasites are maintained and incur costs in hosts, and how this may affect host or parasite population dynamics and persistence. This, in turn, has led me back to sexual selection.

Much ado has been made about infectious disease as a conservation issue, notably in amphibian hosts. Some of the attention may be misplaced, but in some cases parasites pose grave and immediate threats to host populations and species. Conservation operates with limited resources - we aim to identify conditions where parasites are most likely to be conservation threats, and so advise on the optimal use of conservation resources. We use a suite of approaches, methods, systems and most importantly, collaborations to ascertain when conservation actions to mitigate the effects of amphibian parasites are warranted (and how to do so when warranted).