She was a keynote speaker at the ninth World Congress of Herpetology, which has attracted 874 people - 90% of them from overseas- to the University of Otago’s Dunedin campus this week.
Herpetology is the study of reptiles and amphibians.
Internationally respected University of Otago frog researcher and conference director Prof Phil Bishop said the benefits of having the congress in Dunedin were ‘‘huge’’, and all aspects of the organisation had gone well.
It had been an ‘‘important and significant’’ conference for the university, Dunedin and New Zealand, Prof Bishop said.
‘‘If you look at conservation in New Zealand, it’s primarily focused on birds and hopefully everyone is now going to realise how important reptiles and amphibians are because 870 people came to Dunedin to discuss them,’’ he said.
Dr Mitchell, a physiological ecologist at the University of Western Australia in Perth, devoted her talk to aspects of ‘‘assisted colonisation of reptiles threatened by climate change’’.
Many threatened reptile species were ‘‘isolated in pockets of habitat that are warming rapidly’’, she said.
Extinctions could occur in species that could not move away from such habitat, and long-lived reptiles were at ‘‘particular risk’’.
She has also undertaken research on New Zealand’s tuatara, and noted that the species had been successfully reintroduced to Otago through the Orokonui Ecosanctuary.
Dr Mitchell also reflected on work undertaken in association with the Western Australian Department of Biosecurity, Conservation and Attractions to make a trial translocation of zoo-bred western swamp turtles from Perth to other areas about 400km south and close to the coast.
Some scientists might regard proposals to establish new colonies in cooler, moister conditions to the south as ‘‘radical’’, but a trial translocation strategy - termed assisted colonisation or migration - offered reptiles ‘‘a route for their long-term survival’’, she said.
