Each year the CBA funds a number of collaborative pilot projects and synthesis groups. Our latest round of successful applicants has been announced.

An Ignition Grant provides an opportunity to test the feasibility of new and innovative ideas, techniques, tools, etc. with new collaborators with the intention that the interactions and results will subsequently form the basis of more substantial research proposals, publications, and/or collaborations in the future. 

Synthesis Group funding provides support for small group meetings and interim analyses that aim to generate high impact syntheses and reviews of existing data or concepts; collaborative grant proposals; and/or policy and/or management outcomes via knowledge transfer amongst biodiversity scientists and policy makers and/or managers.

Ignition Grants awarded

1. Non-destructive genomic identification of museum-preserved parasites and their hosts from formalin preservation media (CSIRO, UC, ANU; project contact Erin Hahn)
2. Microbiome of Eucalyptus viminalis and E. pauciflora and its association with eucalypt dieback (ANU, CSIRO; project contact Celeste Linde)
3. Assessing variation in the susceptibility of Eucalyptus blakleyi to psyllid attack using leaf chemistry traits (ANU, CSIRO, EPSDD; project contact Madison Fink)
4. Synthetic biology conservation approach to conserving amphibian species impacted by the amphibian-killing chytrid fungus (UC, CSIRO; project contact Simon Clulow)
5. Comparative Hi-C of northern Australian Gehyra: do chromosomal rearrangements restrict gene flow in sympatric species? (ANU, UC; project contact Emily Roycroft)
6. Skinks with thermolabile sex as sensitive indicators of environmental change (UC, ANU, CSIRO, BOM; project contact Duminda Dissanayake) 

Student Project awarded

1. How will alpine soil invertebrate communities respond to drier soils and changing snow dynamics due to climate change? (ANU, CSIRO; student project - contact Pieter Arnold)

Synthesis Groups awarded

1. Conservation Genetics in ACTion: a case study for the incorporation of genetic theory into management processes (ANU, UC, CSIRO; group contact Linda Neaves)
2. Combining genomic data, new inference methods and long-term population data to uncover population processes (UC, ANU, CSIRO; group contact Simon Clulow)
3. High Country Eucalypt Dieback Synthesis Network (ANU, CSIRO, UC; group contact Adrienne Nicotra)

Thank you to those who submitted a proposal and congratulations to those who were successful in receiving funding.

We look forward to seeing these new collaborations develop and sharing the progress and findings from some of our past Ignition Projects and Synthesis Groups at a special CBA Science Symposium in the second half of 2021.