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Dulmini Liyanage

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Dulmini Liyanage is a PhD candidate at at the School of Earth, Atmospheric, and Life Sciences (SEALS), University of Wollongong, under the supervision of Dr. Bethany Hoye, Dr. Katharina J. Peters, and Dr. Debashish Mazumder. She is passionate about studying how wild animals respond to human-induced environmental changes. Dulmini graduated with First-Class honors in Environment Science from the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. Her undergraduate thesis focused on the impacts of garbage consumption on Asian elephants, and her groundbreaking findings were published in the Journal of Mammalian Biology in 2021. In 2022, she moved to Australia to pursue her PhD.

Research

Dulmini’s PhD research explores the consequences of wildlife foraging on human garbage, focusing on the Silver Gull (Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae), a key scavenging species in Australia. She investigates how dietary changes from garbage foraging impact their reproduction, growth, development, and the carriage of human pathogens and antimicrobial resistance. Her work aims to discover the ecological mechanisms and processes that can inform better management recommendations for wildlife access to human garbage. 

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