Dale Nimmo

Professor Dale Nimmo

Animal Ecologist

Agricultural, Environmental and Veterinary Sciences

Biography

Associate Professor Dale Nimmo is an animal ecologist with broad interests in how 'big' disturbances – things like fire, drought, and land clearing – influence biodiversity. He completed his PhD at Deakin University in 2011, which focused on how animal species respond to fire regimes in the semi-arid Murray Mallee region of south eastern Australia. After that, he undertook a research fellowship with Professor Andrew F Bennett (La Trobe University) on the concept of ecological resilience and its relevance to applied ecology, which a particular focus on woodland bird communities and their response to an extreme climatic event: southern Australia's 'Millennium Drought'. A/Prof Nimmo was awarded an Alfred Deakin Postdoctoral Fellowship at Deakin University, during which he continued to work on fire ecology and ecological resilience, but also was persuaded to be interested in mammalian predators, namely dingoes, foxes and feral cats.

Research
  • Managing landscapes to minimise the effects on biodiversity of large-scale disturbances, such as fire, climatic extremes, and habitat fragmentation
Publications
Full publications list on CRO

Recent Publications

  • Kopf, R. K., Banks, S., Brent, L. J. N., Humphries, P., Jolly, C. J., Lee, P. C., Luiz, O. J., Nimmo, D., & Winemiller, K. O. Loss of Earth’s old, wise, and large animals. Science, 0(0), eado2705. https://doi.org/doi:10.1126/science.ado2705
  • Miritis, V., Ashman, K., Dickman, C. R., Nimmo, D. G., & Doherty, T. S. (2025). Adapting to novel fire regimes: Using movement to inform conservation of a threatened arboreal mammal. Biological Conservation, 301, 110893. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2024.110893
  • Driscoll, D. A., Macdonald, K. J., Gibson, R. K., Doherty, T. S., Nimmo, D. G., Nolan, R. H., Ritchie, E. G., Williamson, G. J., Heard, G. W., Tasker, E. M., Bilney, R., Porch, N., Collett, R. A., Crates, R. A., Hewitt, A. C., Pendall, E., Boer, M. M., Gates, J., Boulton, R. L.,…Phillips, R. D. (2024). Biodiversity impacts of the 2019–2020 Australian megafires. Nature, 635(8040), 898-905. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-08174-6
  • Moore, H. A., Gibson, L. A., & Nimmo, D. G. (2024). The influence of fire mosaics on mammal occurrence in north-western Australia. Fire Ecology, 20(1), 84. https://doi.org/10.1186/s42408-024-00317-4
  • Wooster, E. ., Lundgren, E., Balisi, M., Lemoine, R., Sandom, C., Svenning, J.-C., Rowan, J., Jolly, C., Linley, G., Cowan, M., Wright, N., Westaway, D., Nimmo, D., Nichols, H. and Middleton, O. (2024), Functional Traits of the World's Late Quaternary Terrestrial Mammalian Predators. Global Ecololgy and Biogeography e13909. https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.13909