Dr. Jamie Waterman

Biography

Jamie is an ecophysiologist and chemical ecologist who uses interdisciplinary tools to understand the interactions between plants and their environment, with a particular focus on herbivory. Specifically, his work explores how chemical, morphological and developmental plant traits shape herbivore feeding patterns and vice versa. Jamie uses techniques spanning chemistry, molecular biology and behavioural ecology to understand these interactions on a mechanistic level. He holds a BS in Forestry from the University of Vermont (2018) and a PhD in Ecology from Western Sydney University (2021). During his PhD, he explored how silicon accumulation and deposition integrate with carbon-based defence pathways in silicon hyperaccumulating plant species, and how these silicon-based defences impact herbivores. In 2021, Jamie was awarded a Swiss National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship to conduct an independent research project at the University of Bern, where he investigated the dynamic patterns of stress-induced plant volatile production, emission and perception. Currently, Jamie is building kinetic models to understand the relationship between complex damage patterns and plant defence responses, as well as actively seeking funding to continue exploring the physiological mechanisms underlying the dynamic patterns and processes of plant-environment interactions across scales.