About
I am a Chancellor’s Research Fellow within the School of Life Sciences at the University of Technology Sydney, where I teach undergraduate subjects, lead the Adaptive Ecology Lab (supervising interns, Honours, Masters and PhD students and Research Assistants), and conduct and publish high-impact research in the fields of ecology and evolutionary biology. I have a broad range of interests spanning global change ecology, biological invasions, species interactions and much more! Throughout my short time as an academic, I’ve built an extensive network of local, national, and international collaborators where we’ve gone on to secure grant funding, conduct novel research, and publish our results with high coverage from traditional and social media.
I love formulating ideas and working collaboratively with colleagues and students to achieve our research goals. My favourite parts of my job are getting out into the field to collect data and sharing my findings with the scientific community (e.g., conferences and seminars) and the general public (e.g., through school outreach or organised public events).
My goal is to build a collaborative, positive lab that conducts meaningful research to unveil how our ecosystems will respond to global environmental change, both now and in the future using experimental, synthetic and observational approaches. If this sounds like something you’d like to be a part of, please get in touch!
Recent Publications
Handling the heat: Warming does not reduce alpine plant survival or reproduction under high precipitation conditions
Zoe A Xirocostas, Angela T Moles, Freya M Brown, Zachary A Brown, Giancarlo M Chiarenza, Rosa Earle, Andy Leigh, Xuemeng Mu, Emma E Sumner, Susanna E Venn, Virginia G Williamson, Karen Zeng & Inna Osmolovsky
Climate Change Ecology (2026)
In poor taste: leaf palatability traits are not correlated with aboveground enemy release
Zoe A Xirocostas, Eve Slavich, Susan E Everingham, Juha-Pekka Salminen, Louis Booth, Roslyn Gleadow, Jeff Ollerton, Riin Tamme, Begoña Peco, Vincent Lesieur, S Raghu, Robert R Junker, Meelis Pärtel, Akane Uesugi, Stephen P Bonser, Mark J Hovenden & Angela T Moles
Oecologia (2026)
Dr Zoe Xirocostas 