Projects per year
Personal profile
Biography
I have worked in the Western Australian Government, at UWA, and been Director of two world class botanic gardens, while maintaining an active field research program right up to the present day. I have broad interests in biodiversity and in devising ways for people to live sustainably with biodiversity on old, climatically-buffered infertile landscapes.
I was born on the north coast of New South Wales in 1951, and moved west as a teenager, attending John Curtin Senior High School in Fremantle before enrolling as a science undergraduate at UWA in 1969.
I graduated from UWA with a BSc (Hons 1st class) in botany and zoology in 1973 and a PhD on speciation in kangaroo paws (Anigozanthos: Haemodoraceae) in 1978. My PhD supervisor was the late Associate Professor Sid James, an inspirational teacher and original thinker.
I was employed as Western Australia’s first Flora Conservation Research Officer in 1977, and promoted to Senior Principal Research Scientist and Officer in Charge of the Western Australian Wildlife Research Centre, Department of Conservation and Land Management from 1988-1992. In 1990 I was Fulbright Senior Scholar at the University of Georgia (USA) and Miller Visiting Research Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, working on granite outcrop plant life, which continues as a research interest.
I joined Kings Park and Botanic Garden as the Director in 1992, and from 1999 to 2004 served as Chief Executive Officer of the Botanic Gardens and Parks Authority (which manages Kings Park and Botanic Garden and Bold Park), leading the delivery of improvements to programmes and infrastructure to world-class standards. At the same time I held Adjunct Professorships at UWA (Botany Department) and Curtin University of Technology (School of Biology).
While Foundation Professor of Plant Conservation Biology at The University of Western Australia from 2004-2006, I developed new theory on the evolution and conservation of biodiversity on the world’s oldest landscapes, and led the establishment of new degrees in conservation biology.
I joined the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew in London, a World Heritage site and global plant science powerhouse of 800 staff, in October 2006, and led the organisation through celebrations of its 250th anniversary in 2009. I was honoured to be the first non-British Director (CEO and Chief Scientist) to hold that august post. I led the development and implementation of a forward 10 year Breathing Planet Program for Kew and its global partners. This collaborative Program aimed to make an urgent and necessary step change in the application of science-based plant diversity solutions towards sustainable living and a reasonable quality of life in the face of accelerating climate change and the loss of biodiversity. The Millennium Seed Bank Project was a key part of this program.
In October 2012, I stepped down as Director (CEO & Chief Scientist) of Kew to become Winthrop Professor of Biodiversity at the University of Western Australia, based in Albany at UWA's Centre of Excellence in Natural Resource Management, with a joint appointment at the School of Plant Biology.
Roles and responsibilities
My work at UWA aims to establish an internationally recognised biodiversity research program focussing on the evolution, ecology, conservation and indigenous knowledge systems of temperate global biodiversity hotspots.
Future research
With one of the world's richest temperate floras, the southwest features prominently in international efforts to conserve and sustainably use biodiversity, as do Western Australia's deserts and tropical north. At the same time, major land-based economic development is underway in WA. There is a vital strategic need to marry high quality biodiversity data and research with development projects to enable sustainability, to ensure international obligations are met and to achieve best practice in environmental management. The project, outlined in depth in Hopper (2009 Plant & Soil), will focus on OCBILs (old, climatically buffered, infertile landscapes), prevalent in WA, and on exemplar organisms. The project will inform world class sustainable development through six integrated research themes: (1) understanding rarity, endemism and local dispersal in Haemodoraceae on OCBILS; (2) the Semiarid Cradle hypothesis tested with Haemodoraceae and eucalypts; (3) the James Effect tested in eucalypts on OCBILs; (4) accentuated persistence of old herbaceous lineages in the southwest; (5) biological specialization on OCBIL granite outcrops; (6) conservation, ethnobotany and land management on OCBILs.
Funding overview
I have also attracted signifcant Australian Commonwealth funds from, e.g., the Australian Biological Resources Study, and been involved in one past ARC Linkage grant.
I have one current ARC Discovery grant: ARC DP140103357 2014-2016 'The evolution and conservation consequences of promiscuity in plants pollinated by vertebrates', held jointly with Dr Siegy Krauss and Dr Ryan Phillips from the Botanic Gardens and Parks Authority.
I also was awarded a Discovery Outstanding Researcher Award for three years attached to this Discovery grant.
Previous positions
Foundation Professor of Plant Conservation Biology, The University of Western Australia (2004-2006)
Chief Executive Officer, Botanic Gardens & Parks Authority (1999 – 2004)
Director, Kings Park and Botanic Garden (1992 – 1999)
Current projects
Industrial relevance
Teaching overview
Research
Haemodoraceae - phylogenetics, biology and conservation
Old, climatically-buffered, infertile landscapes (OCBILs)– evolution, ecology and conservation of biodiversity
Systematics, evolution and conservation of Australian orchids
Systematics and conservation of Western Australian eucalypts
Collaborative cross-cultural knowledge systems of biodiversity - Noongar and western science
Languages
Keywords
- Old climatically buffered infertile landscapes
- Evolution
- Conservation biology
- Botanic gardens
- Biodiversity
- Taxonomy
- Molecular phylogeny
- Pollination ecology
- Granite outcrop plant life
- Eucalypts
- Orchids
- Kangaroo paws
- Native plants
- Ethnobotany
- Aboriginal science knowledge systems
- Sustainability
- Haemodoraceae
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Projects 2006 2019
Genetic consequences of insect pollination in a bird-adapted tree
Bezemer, N. & Hopper, S.
Ecological Society of Australia Holsworth Wildlife Research Endowment
1/07/18 → 30/06/19
Project: Research
Collecting the West: How collections create Western Australia
Paterson, A., Lydon, E., Hopper, S., Gregory, J., Konishi, S., Van Gent, J., Burrows, T., Witcomb, A. & Coles, A.
1/01/16 → 31/12/19
Project: Research
Collecting the West: How collections create Western Australia
Paterson, A., Lydon, E., Hopper, S., Gregory, J., Konishi, S., Van Gent, J., Burrows, T., Witcomb, A. & Coles, A.
1/01/16 → 31/12/19
Project: Research
Collecting the West: How collections create Western Australia
Paterson, A., Lydon, E., Hopper, S., Gregory, J., Konishi, S., Van Gent, J., Burrows, T., Witcomb, A. & Coles, A.
Art Gallery of Western Australia
1/01/16 → 31/12/19
Project: Research
Collecting the West: How collections create Western Australia
Paterson, A., Lydon, E., Hopper, S., Gregory, J., Konishi, S., Van Gent, J., Burrows, T., Witcomb, A. & Coles, A.
State Library of WA (J S Battye Library of WA History)
1/01/16 → 31/12/19
Project: Research
Research Output 2004 2018
Natural hybridization in the context of Ocbil theory
Hopper, S. D., 1 Sep 2018, In : South African Journal of Botany. 118, p. 284-289 6 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article
A new phytogeographic map for the Southwest Australian Floristic Region after an exceptional decade of collection and discovery
Gioia, P. & Hopper, S. D., 1 May 2017, In : Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society. 184, 1, p. 1-15 15 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article
Botanical illustration and photography: A southern hemisphere perspective
Hickman, E. J., Yates, C. J. & Hopper, S. D., 21 Dec 2017, In : Australian Systematic Botany. 30, 4, p. 291-325 35 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Review article
Human Niche Construction: Noongar evidence in pre-colonial Southwestern Australia
Lullfitz, A., Dortch, J., Hopper, S. D., Pettersen, C., Reynolds, R. & Guilfoyle, D., 1 Apr 2017, In : Conservation and Society. 15, 2, p. 201-216 16 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article
Novel Consequences of Bird Pollination for Plant Mating
Krauss, S. L., Phillips, R. D., Karron, J. D., Johnson, S. D., Roberts, D. G. & Hopper, S. D., 1 May 2017, In : Trends in Plant Science. 22, 5, p. 395-410 16 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Review article
Datasets
Data from: Mutualists or parasites? Context-dependent influence of symbiotic fly larvae on carnivorous investment in the Albany pitcher plant
Lymbery, S. J. (Creator), Didham, R. (Creator), Hopper, S. (Creator), Simmons, L. (Creator), Dryad Digital Repository, 22 Nov 2016
DOI: 10.5061/dryad.p6440, https://datadryad.org/resource/doi:10.5061/dryad.p6440
Dataset
Data from: Paternity analysis reveals wide pollen dispersal and high multiple paternity in a small isolated population of the bird-pollinated Eucalyptus caesia (Myrtaceae)
Bezemer, N. (Creator), Krauss, S. (Creator), Phillips, R. (Creator), Roberts, D. G. (Creator), Hopper, S. (Creator), Dryad Digital Repository, 28 Jun 2016
DOI: 10.5061/dryad.43rv3, https://datadryad.org/resource/doi:10.5061/dryad.43rv3
Dataset