Dr Julie Kern
Postdoctoral Research Fellow - Faculty of Science, Agriculture, Business and Law
Email: jkern@une.edu.au
Twitter: @julie_m_kern
Biography
Dr Kern is a behavioural ecologist and a member of UNE’s Animal Behaviour and Ecology Lab. Her research focuses on how both natural and anthropogenic factors influence cooperation, sociality and vocal communication. In 2011, she co-founded the Dwarf Mongoose Research Project with Prof Andy Radford at the University of Bristol, UK, and has since used the species as a model with which to experimentally test cooperative exchanges, variation in individual contributions to cooperative behaviour, the role of intra-group social relationships, vocal communication, and outgroup conflict. She joined UNE in 2020 to study aggressive and affiliative interactions in Noisy Miner colonies, whose highly complex social structure makes them an ideal species in which to test the links between social networks and cooperation. Dr Kern also has a keen interest in conservation and more applied behavioural research. Within this framework, she has investigated the impacts of anthropogenic noise, considering how this global pollutant affects animal behaviour, as well as the impacts of trophy hunting in African elephants.
