Michael Sramek

I have always had a keen interest in the smaller parts of the natural world. As a child I would catch small reptiles and invertebrates and attempt to make a small ecosystem, figuring out what role each organism played in the greater system. This led me into my honour's project at UNSW, which was aimed at assessing how grazing by sheep in arid Australia restricts the flow of energy from vegetation to the organisms of the brown food web, especially to termites. When I was completing fieldwork for this project I was amazed by the frog life persisting in the desert. Now I am lucky enough to work with the FrogID project as a validator and assist in efforts to conserve frogs.