Perth Zoo Mathematics & Statistics Scholarship

Perth Zoo collaborate in a number of Recovery Teams, teams of scientists from DEC, Perth Zoo, Universities and other groups who work together with the aim to prevent the extinction of threatened species. A part of this programme is breeding species in captivity and releasing them in their natural habitat.

The key questions with Breed for Release programmes world-wide are: How many animals of this species is enough for a release? How many releases will be required to accomplish a successfully established new colony of this species? What is the carrying capacity of the release site landscape for this species? When can releases cease without compromising the final long-term result?

Perth Zoo is providing a top up scholarship for a PhD student to develop a modelling programme or programmes which could answer these questions, utilising a large database of information taken from DEC's recovery programme monitoring, as well as up-to-date information on the known life history parameters of individual species or groups of species.  It is possible that different models may be required for species with different life history strategies - eg Dasyurids with male die-off after breeding events compared to rodents that exhibit boom bust breeding.The data available from the recovery team monitoring should be sufficient to allow retrospective testing of the developed modelling programme/s.

It is intended that the modelling programme or programmes will be able to be utilised as a tool by wildlife managers for decision-making regarding the various aspects of species recovery described above.  This would be an exciting and important advance in Species Recovery Science

How to apply: