Public Lecture - Making the Invisible Visible: Uncovering Animal Lives Through the Study of their DNA

Speaker: A/Prof Celine Frere 
Affiliation: University of Queensland

Abstract

It is five o'clock in the morning and the world is slowly waking up. The faint echo of traffic drifts through the streets, kitchen lights flicker on, dogs walk their owners, and rubbish trucks complete their routes. At the same time, another world is stirring. Birds announce the dawn with their songs, possums retreat to their daytime shelters, and kangaroos quietly graze along the edges of towns. Hidden in plain sight, animals are navigating landscapes transformed by humans where once-pristine habitats have now given way to cities, farmland and fragmented landscapes. Their resilience is undeniable, but understanding the limits of that resilience has become one of the defining conservation challenges of our time.

I believe that understanding animals' lives is paramount to conserving them. And as such, I have spent my career seeking to understand that fight for survival, pushing the frontiers of genomics to unravel the hidden lives of animals and inform conservation decisions, making the invisible visible.

In this keynote address, I will take you on a personal and scientific journey, exploring how my experiences as an LGBTQIA+ scientist have shaped my curiosity, approach to discovery and belief in the value of seeing beyond what is immediately visible. Through stories from the field and the laboratory, I will share how DNA is uncovering the hidden world of animals and revolutionising wildlife conservation.