Dayana Barker, PhD Candidate, Confirmation Seminar ‘Biodiversity of Australasian ticks’

Dayana’s advisors are Prof Mal Jones and Dr Owen Seeman

Abstract

Ticks cause disease in companion animals like our dogs and cats, farm animals like our cattle, and us, humans. Indeed, ticks are hosts to a greater variety of disease-causing organisms than the notorious mosquitoes. Yet the ticks of Australasia are poorly known; the development of the field of tick-systematics Australasia has not been considered. In this seminar I will present: (i) my PhD plan; (ii) my first paper, in which I described a new species of tick and revised a dichotomous key; and (iii) comment on the development of the field of tick-systematics in Australasia from the first description of the first endemic Australasian tick, a tick collected by Joseph Banks of the Endeavour in 1775 to the present (about 150 years).

Attending staff and students please submit your audience feedback here