Team Bio

Our team members bring complementary skills to this exciting project to give it the best chance of success. Team leader Dr Karl Vernes is an ecologist and kangaroo specialist, Dr Stephen Jackson is an expert on the natural history and taxonomy of Australian mammals, Dr Kristofer Helgen is a world authority on mammal taxonomy and has made several notable mammal discoveries, and PhD student Todd Elliott is an ecologist, natural historian, and an award-winning nature photographer.

Karl Vernes

I am a mammal ecologist with a passion for contributing to the conservation and management of mammals, especially Australia’s threatened kangaroos, wallabies, and rat-kangaroos.

I have always been interested in Australian mammals; as a teenager at high school I avidly read any book on mammals I could get my hands on, collected skulls and bones, and 'went bush' to watch animals in the wild. I studied Zoology at James Cook University, continuing my studies there with a Masters and then a PhD; both degrees focused on kangaroos, wallabies, and rat-kangaroos, and how ecological knowledge of a species can help guide conservation and management.

I have published over 80 peer-reviewed research papers and book chapters on mammals. My work has always been field-based, in recent years, heavily focused on the use of passive infra-red cameras (‘camera-traps’) to understand mammal ecology. In the pursuit of understanding mammal ecology, I have deployed camera traps for mammals in a wide range of habitats and locations – from the temperate forests of Tasmania to the tropical woodlands of the Kimberley, and on three continents. In addition to work in Australia where I have primarily focused on kangaroos and other marsupials, my research questions have led me to Canada – where I worked on flying squirrels and their specialised diet of truffles, Bhutan – where I currently work on protecting biological corridors for iconic cats like tiger and leopard, and Mexico – where I have a camera-based research project underway that is examining the use of semi-flooded caverns (‘cenotes’) by mammals that include jaguar and puma.

I have spent a decade gathering data on the sighting locations reported for the desert rat-kangaroo, and feel this project can make a tangible contribution to the knowledge of the species distribution and habitat. You can see my research profile and interests on Instagram, Twitter, or Google Scholar.

Stephen Jackson

Dr Stephen Jackson in an internationally recognised mammalogist with over 25 year experience in the study of mammals in the field, in captivity and in museum collections. He is an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at the University of New South Wales, a Research Associate of the Smithsonian Institution (Washington D.C.) and a Research Associate of the Australian Museum. He works with collaborators in museums and universities throughout Australia and overseas including the United States of America, China, France and the Netherlands. To date he has published 6 books and over 50 papers on various aspects of his research. Two of his books have been awarded the Whitley Medal from the Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales for the best natural history book.

Kristofer Helgen

Kristofer M. Helgen is Professor of Biological Sciences and Deputy Director of the Centre for Applied Conservation Science at the University of Adelaide. His research focuses especially on fieldwork with wild animals and research in museum collections to document the richness of life, explore global change, and contribute to important problems in biomedicine. He is well known for discovering or rediscovering species of mammals all over the world, and one of his greatest goals is to search for a remnant population of Caloprymnus in Australia.

Professor Helgen received his undergraduate degree in Biology from Harvard University and his Ph.D. in Zoology at the University of Adelaide. From 2008-2017 he served as Curator of Mammals at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. He has worked professionally in more than 50 countries, and has documented and named dozens of previously overlooked species of living mammals, including the Skywalker Hoolock Gibbon of China and Myanmar, the Greater Monkey-Faced Bat of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, and the Olinguito of the Andes Mountains of Colombia and Ecuador. He has organized and led major research expeditions all over the world. He is a dedicated public communicator in support of biodiversity discovery and conservation, and appears regularly on television and radio programs.

Helgen holds professorial or other honorary academic appointments at George Mason University (Virginia), the Natural History Museum (London), the American Museum of Natural History (New York), the Bishop Museum (Honolulu), the Australian Museum (Sydney), the South Australian Museum (Adelaide), and the National Geographic Society (Washington, D.C.), where he was inducted as a National Geographic Explorer in 2009. In 2016 Helgen was awarded the James McWha Award for Excellence from the University of Adelaide and the Westbrook Free Lectureship at the Wagner Free Institute of Science in Philadelphia.

Todd F. Elliott

Todd Elliott's passion for the natural world has led him to research global biodiversity and interrelationships in nature. His studies have taken him to field sites in remote corners of the world to explore tropical rainforests, temperate woodlands, deserts, beaches, and high mountains on six continents. Todd has authored many scientific publications covering this research and has discovered and described organisms new to science. In 2018, his field guide to mushrooms of the southeastern United States was published by Timber Press. Todd is an award-winning nature photographer with hundreds of his images appearing in books, magazines and scientific journals. He is currently focusing much of his PhD research on understanding the diets of poorly studied vertebrates. To see photos and read more about Todd’s projects and adventures, check out his: Instagram, Website, Twitter, Research Gate,
or Google Scholar.