Meng-Han Joseph Chung

Meng-Han Joseph Chung

I am a conservation biologist, currently working with A/Prof. Simon Clulow and Prof. Richard Duncan on frog conservation We are studying the application of vaccination to increase amphibians’ resistance to recent outbreaks of fungus disease, chytridiomycosis. I am currently running a long-term experiment on the endangered green and golden bell frogs Litoria aurea.

I did my first post-doc (2023-2024) as an evolutionary biologist at the Australian National University, collaborating with Prof Michael Jennions, A/Prof Megan Head and A/Prof Dan Noble. We ran large-scale animal experiments to test fundamental theories in life history and sexual selection (such as inbreeding depression, resource allocation trade-offs, and developmental plasticity)

I earned my PhD from ANU in mid-2023 . My thesis focuses on short-term changes in reproductive strategy (e.g, sperm priming, plastic mating behaviour), long-term reproductive costs (e.g., rates of senescence) and environmental effects (e.g. high temperature, low food availability, strong water current, freshwater salinisation, water turbidity) on trait expression. Throughout my PhD, I was fortunate to receive support from several scholarships provided by the Australian and Taiwanese governments. I study these topics mainly on the poeciliid fishes (guppies and mosquitofish).