QAEco acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the lands on which we live and work, across Australia and the Torres Strait Islands. Sovereignty was never ceded; these lands always were, and always will be, the lands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People. We pay our respects to their Elders, past and present.

We are the Quantitative and Applied Ecology Research Group (QAEco), based in the School of Agriculture, Food, and Ecosystem Sciences at the University of Melbourne. QAEco is a diverse group of individuals who pursue a range of research topics in ecology. In our work we tackle issues from the pressing - such as climate change and conservation - to the fundamental - such as population- and individual-level processes. We seek to be a welcoming and friendly group that exists within the university ecosystem. We like to invite friends and other groups to join us on an informal basis at every opportunity.

QAEco (Quantitative and Applied ECOlogy) Lab is a bit unusual. Compared with many other lab groups across the university and elsewhere that often work under a single lab lead, we are more collective. At a superficial level, we represent an aggregation of what would normally be multiple labs. We seek to draw on the benefits of banding together by being inclusive and integrative, enjoying and benefiting from a critical mass and diversity of perspectives, skills and ideas, and providing opportunities and forms of support that might not be available within a smaller lab group. However, capitalizing on these benefits takes work, coordination, and facilitation, and being a larger group comes with some challenges. For example, group meetings may be more intimidating for new people because of their size.