South Australian Museum - North Terrace, Adelaide, South Australia 5000

Biography

Professor Steve Donnellan is an affiliate Professor of the University of Adelaide in the Schools of Earth & Environmental Sciences and Molecular & Biomedical Science, and an affiliate of the School of Biological Sciences, Flinders University of South Australia.

Professor Donnellan, an evolutionary biologist, has broad interests in the evolutionary history of the fauna of the Australo-papuan region, natural resource management, and wildlife forensics.

Steve gained BSc (Hons) at UNSW and his PhD degree at Macquarie University. He arrived in Adelaide (April 1985) for a 3-year postdoctoral position at the South Australian Museum, and received a permanent appointment in the Museum's Evolutionary Biology Unit 1990.

Steve chairs the management committee for the South Australian Regional Facility for Molecular Ecology and Evolution, based in the Darling Building on the University of Adelaide's North Terrace campus, only 50 metres from the museum. The facility, managed by five South Australian Museum staff, provides serviced laboratories for molecular genetic analyses in molecular ecology and evolution and is utilised by staff and research students from the University of Adelaide, Flinders University of South Australia, the South Australian Museum and the South Australian Research and Development Institute. Our scientists and technicians provide expert advice and guidance on project planning, molecular genetic techniques and analytical methods.

Steve is the deputy director of the Australian Centre for Evolutionary Biology and Biodiversity, a research centre of the University of Adelaide.

Steve also teaches in undergraduate courses at the University of Adelaide and Flinders University of South Australia.

Professor Donnellan is responsible for the Australian Biological Tissue Collection (ABTC) at The South Australian Museum, the largest collection of tissues suitable for molecular analyses in the southern hemisphere and one of the world's largest.

His broad role is to conduct research on evolutionary biology problems and to provide expert advice on this topic to the broader scientific community and government agencies. Steve's has taken a highly collaborative approach to his research and has conducted collaborative research projects with colleagues at most of the Australian museums, many universities, state & commonwealth agencies and numerous overseas based colleagues.

Steve has:

• won >$4 million in competitive research funding;
• published >80 peer-reviewed scientific papers and book chapters;
• supervised/supervises 23 Honours and 22PhD students.

Major Publications: (Top 5)

Ratcliffe R, DONNELLAN SC, Lanser JA, Manning P, Heuzenroeder M. 1997. Interspecies sequence differences in the Mip protein from the genus Legionella: implications for function and evolutionary relatedness. Molecular Microbiology 25: 1149-1158.

Saint K, Austin C, DONNELLAN SC, Hutchinson MN. 1998. C-mos, a nuclear marker useful for squamate phylogenetic analysis. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 10: 259-263.

Jordan P, DONNELLAN SC, Goodman AE. 2002. Microsatellite primers for Australian and New Guinean pythons isolated with an efficient marker development method for related species. Molecular Ecology Notes 2: 78-82.

Adams MA, Foster R, Hutchinson MN, Hutchinson RG, DONNELLAN SC. 2003. The first unisexual scincid lizard, Menetia greyii (Reptilia, Scincidae). Evolution 57: 2619-2627.

Frost D, Grant T, Faivovich J, Bain R, Haas A, Haddad C, de Sa R, Channing A, Wilkinson M, DONNELLAN SC, Raxworthy C, Campbell J, Blotto B, Moler P, Drewes R, Nussbaum R, Lynch J, Green D, Wheeler W. 2006. The amphibian tree of life. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 297, 370 pages.