• High impact syntheses and reviews of existing data or concepts; and/or
• Collaborative grant proposals; and/or
• Policy/management outcomes via knowledge exchange between biodiversity scientists and policy makers/managers.

Eligibility

CBA Synthesis Groups (SG) will need to:

• Have a biodiversity science focus (evolutionary biology, population and ecosystem ecology, genomics, bioinformatics, and/or spatial modelling);
• Address either blue-sky research questions or applied research outcomes - the CBA supports a mix of SGs across basic and translational* research; and
• Be co-led by researchers from at least two or more CBA partner institutions (ie. ANU, CSIRO, UC) with a good diversity of participants (ECRs, gender balance, etc). Colleagues from other institutions and external stakeholders are also encouraged.

* If you are interested in developing a proposal with potential policy and/or management engagement, please feel free to discuss your SG idea with our Knowledge Broker Paula Doyle (paula.doyle@canberra.edu.au).

Selection criteria

Applications will be assessed by the CBA Director and Liaison Committee in terms of above eligibility criteria and the Synthesis Group's potential to achieve some of the CBA's key impact goals:

• Increasing success with collaborative research proposals (ARC or other); and/or
• Increasing the number of joint publications across institutions; and/or
• Increasing demonstrable impact through translation of biodiversity research to policy and management.

Apply using the Synthesis Group proposal template (under Downloads).

Awarded SGs will be encouraged to share the outcomes of their SG in a seminar or workshop organised by CBA staff.

Past Synthesis Groups

• Bogong Moth Summit: Uniting people, place, and purpose for conservation
• AirDNA Workshop
• Integrating mechanistic models and individual-based data to predict population dynamics in a changing world
• Quantification and analysis of biosystematics and whole organism teaching in Australia
• Integrating ecosystem ecology into freshwater ecosystem management
• MegaMove: a global synthesis for informing marine megafauna conservation
• High Country Dieback Network
• Conservation Genetics in ACTion: a case study for the incorporation of genetic theory into management processes
• Combining genomic data, new inference methods and long-term population data to uncover population processes
• Precision Landscape Regeneration – integrating climate change responses, production and biodiversity
• Using thermal tolerance limits to understand species susceptibility under climate change
• Planning with plasticity: Shifting management and conservation paradigms by integrating biological and organizational plasticity
• Genomic empowerment of Australian bee systematics, taxonomy, conservation and diversity
• Using expert elicitation to identify impacts of climate change on Australian species
• Reconciling comparative and meta-analytic practices in an era of big data
• Improving species conservation: pathway to the wild (co-funded with the Fenner Environment and Society Synthesis Program)
• Using expert elicitation to identify impacts of climate change on Australia’s alpine animals
• How to use genomic data for relatedness and quantitative genetic estimation in non-model species
• Crossing Lines: a new synthesis on Asian, Melanesian and Australian biotic exchange