Michael Calver
Associate Professor
Environmental and Conservation Sciences
Murdoch University
Australia
Biography
Michael Calver is best described as a frustrated entomologist. After completing a PhD on grasshopper ecology in 1985, his early jobs as a research scientist (vertebrate pests), a secondary school teacher (a background in vertebrate pests was useful for this) and a Lecturer in Distance Education provided little opportunity for entomological research. He thought things were looking up when he accepted a position in the School of Biological Sciences and Biotechnology at Murdoch University in 1994, but he soon discovered that the prospective research students mostly wanted to work on mammals, although birds were accepted grudgingly as a second choice. I thus became a de facto vertebrate wildlife biologist, with insects only entering the picture as food for ‘real animals’. With the exception of some brief flirtations with plant pathology and bibliometrics, terrestrial vertebrate wildlife remain, by default, his main area of research.
Research Interest
Animal ecology, with particular reference to predation.
Publications
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Hall, C., Bryant, K., Fontaine, J., Calver, M., (2016), Do collar-mounted predation deterrents restrict wandering in pet domestic cats?, Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 176, , pages 96 - 104.
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Forbes-Harper, J., Crawford, H., Dundas, S., Warburton, N., Adams, P., Bateman, P., Calver, M., Fleming, P., (2017), Diet and bite force in red foxes: ontogenetic and sex differences in an invasive carnivore, Journal of Zoology, 303, , pages 54 - 63.
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Paap, T., Burgess, T., Calver, M., McComb, J., Shearer, B., Hardy, G., (2017), A thirteen year study on the impact of a severe canker disease of Corymbia calophylla, a keystone tree in Mediterranean-type forests, Forest Pathology (Online), 47, 1, pages 1 - 7.
