Jane Melville

Jane Melville is passionate about reptiles and amphibians, especially lizards. She is the Senior Curator, Terrestrial Vertebrates at Museums Victoria, and Associate Professor at the School of Biological Sciences at Monash University. Jane obtained her PhD in Zoology at the University of Tasmania in December 1998, on the evolution of ecology, morphology and behaviour in Tasmanian snow skinks. On completion, she took up a postdoctoral research position in 1998 with Prof. Jonathan Losos at Washington University, St Louis – he is now at Harvard University. In 2001, Jane was awarded an Australian Research Council (ARC) Postdoctoral Fellowship and an additional Large ARC Grant based in Professor Rick Shine’s research group at the University of Sydney. In 2002 she was offered the position of Curator of Herpetology at Museum Victoria and in 2008 the Senior Curator of Terrestrial Vertebrates. Since 2002, Jane has also held an honorary position at the School of Biosciences, University of Melbourne. Jane’s research combines field-based studies on reptiles and amphibians across conservation, genetics, ecology, taxonomy and evolution. Currently, her research focuses on revising the taxonomy of agamid lizards by integrating genetic and morphological information. She is also studying the evolutionary basis of morphological and ecological diversity in dragon lizards.