Imagine you are a scientist faced with presenting your research clearly and concisely. Where would you go for help? This book provides the answer. It shows how to use story structure to craft clear, credible presentations. In it you will find exercises to help you give both short and long presentations. Elevator pitches, lightning talks, Three Minute Thesis (3MT®), and conference presentations are all covered as are suggestions for longer presentations. Separate chapters address good poster design, how to tailor your talk to an audience, and presentation skills. Throughout the book the focus is on creating surprising, memorable stories. Scientific presentations are true stories about new discoveries. They are surprising because every new discovery changes our understanding of the world, and memorable because they move audiences. With light-hearted illustrations by Jon Wagner this book will appeal to researchers and graduate students in all areas of science, and other disciplines too.

Telling people about research is just as important as doing it. But many competent researchers are wary of scientific writing, despite its importance for sharpening scientific thinking, advancing their career, obtaining funding for their work and growing the prestige of their institution. This second edition of David Lindsay’s popular book Scientific Writing = Thinking in Words presents a way of thinking about writing that builds on the way good scientists think about research. The simple principles in this book will help you to clarify the objectives of your work and present your results with impact. Fully updated throughout, with practical examples of good and bad writing, an expanded chapter on writing for non-scientists and a new chapter on writing grant applications, this book makes communicating research easier and encourages researchers to write confidently. It is an ideal reference for researchers preparing journal articles, posters, conference presentations, reviews and popular articles; for students preparing theses; and for researchers whose first language is not English.

Are you wishing you knew how to better communicate science, without having to read several hundred academic papers and books on the topic? Luckily Dr Craig Cormick has done this for you! This highly readable and entertaining book distils best practice research on science communication into accessible chapters, supported by case studies and examples. With practical advice on everything from messages and metaphors to metrics and ethics, you will learn what the public think about science and why, and how to shape scientific research into a story that will influence beliefs, behaviours and policies.

Rays are among the largest fishes and evolved from shark-like ancestors nearly 200 million years ago. They share with sharks many life history traits: all species are carnivores or scavengers; all reproduce by internal fertilisation; and all have similar morphological and anatomical characteristics, such as skeletons built of cartilage. Rays of the World is the first complete pictorial atlas of the world’s ray fauna and includes information on many species only recently discovered by scientists while undertaking research for the book. It includes all 26 families and 633 valid named species of rays, but additional undescribed species exist for many groups. Rays of the World features a unique collection of paintings of all living species by Australian natural history artist Lindsay Marshall, compiled as part of a multinational research initiative, the Chondrichthyan Tree of Life Project. Images sourced from around the planet were used by the artist to illustrate the fauna. This comprehensive overview of the world’s ray fauna summarises information such as general identifying features and distributional information about these iconic, but surprisingly poorly known, fishes. It will enable readers to gain a better understanding of the rich diversity of rays and promote wider public interest in the group. Rays of the World is an ideal reference for a wide range of readers, including conservationists, fishery managers, scientists, fishers, divers, students and book collectors.

This Checklist brings together for the first time the names of all 2620 described species of mites that are known to occur in Australia. It gives the correct nomenclature for each species, and places every species in the appropriate genus and family, using the latest available classification. The Checklist also provides a bibliography of information on biogeography, economic importance and, in the case of pests, biology and control. This work is a baseline from which more detailed and specific research projects will draw their fundamental data.

Across the world, cats are loved as pets or are kept or tolerated for their role in controlling some animal pests. But cats, both pets and feral, also kill many native animals and this toll can be enormous. Cats have been remarkably successful in Australia, spreading pervasively across the continent and many islands, occurring in all environments, and proving to be adept and adaptable hunters. A large proportion of Australia’s distinctive fauna is threatened and recent research highlights the significant role that cats play in the decline and extinction of native species. Cats in Australia brings this research together, documenting the extent to which cats have subverted, and are continuing to subvert, Australia’s biodiversity. But the book does much more than spotlight the impacts of cats on Australian nature. It describes the origins of cats and their global spread, their long-standing and varying relationship with people, their global impacts and their ecology. It also seeks to describe the challenge of managing cats, and the options available to constrain their impacts.

Annotation. The only complete listing of the entire Australian ant genera.