The evolutionary odyssey of Dr Emily Roycroft
Dr Emily Roycroft
By age 12, Dr Emily Roycroft was already drawn to evolutionary history.
“I didn’t realise that research could be a career,” she recalls. “But I was fascinated by the idea that millions of years of evolution had shaped the natural world we see today.”
That instinct—to look backward in order to understand what lies ahead - now animates Dr Roycroft’s groundbreaking work in evolutionary biology.
A rising star in the field, she’s making waves with a unique approach: decoding extinction and evolutionary change through museum specimens, genetic data, and a detective-like instinct for uncovering the unseen.
“It’s a bit like being a detective, but a biological one,” Dr Roycroft, from the Monash University School of Biological Sciences explains.
She’s not exaggerating.
One of her most celebrated contributions involved the Gould’s mouse, a native mammal presumed extinct since 1920. By sequencing genetic material from museum specimens, Dr Roycroft and her collaborators discovered the species still survived on an island in Western Australia. “It was hiding in plain sight,” she says. “And we got to remove it from the extinction list.” The study was published in PNAS.
Born and raised in Melbourne, Dr Roycroft didn’t always know evolutionary biology was a career path. She studied a double degree in science and arts at Monash University, majoring in archaeology and biology. Her turning point came during an undergraduate project involving phylogeographic data.
“Phylogeography is a way for us to see the direct imprint of past environments on the genome of modern species,” she says. “It opened my eyes to what genomics can tell us about the past.”
After completing an Honours degree at the University of Auckland and a PhD at the University of Melbourne, Dr Roycroft joined ANU as a postdoctoral fellow. In January 2025, she returned to Monash to head her own lab: the Evolutionary and Conservation Genomics Research Group.
Her work is as ambitious as it is vital. With over $880,000 in competitive research funding and major fellowships—including the 2024 L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Fellowship—Dr Roycroft is leading a suite of projects that tackle some of the most pressing questions in conservation and evolutionary biology.
Central to her research is a focus on harmful mutations and how they accumulate in small or isolated populations. “Classic theory tells us small populations are genetically vulnerable,” she says. “But new evidence suggests that long-term isolation - like what happens on islands - can sometimes purge these mutations.” Her team is now comparing genomes from extinct, endangered, and island-bound species to explore when and why this purging occurs.
Australia, with its record-breaking 46 mammal extinctions since European colonisation, is ground zero for these questions. Dr Roycroft’s earlier work, published in PNAS, showed how native rodent populations collapsed post-1788, often within just a few generations. “Museum specimens give us a direct record of past extinction,” she says. “And they enable us to reconstruct population histories before and during extinction events.”
Her work spans both ends of the evolutionary spectrum. One project investigates how chromosomal rearrangements contribute to the creation of new species. Other projects translate complex genomic data into conservation outcomes. She’s worked closely with Zoos Victoria on threatened species like the Victorian Pookila mouse. “Genetic rescue is one of the most powerful tools we have in modern conservation,” she says. “When populations become really small, they can enter what we call an ‘extinction vortex’. We want to understand when and how to intervene with genetic management before it’s too late.”
Her scientific accolades include the recently awarded prestigious Dobzhansky Prize, bestowed on just one early-career evolutionary biologist worldwide. But Dr Roycroft remains grounded, juggling research with parenting her nine-year-old son. She’s also an avid science communicator, with over 20 media appearances in the last two years. “There’s genuine public interest in conservation,” she says. “Especially in Australia, I think we have a felt sense of loss for our recently extinct species, and there’s real interest learning from the past to protect surviving species.”
As Australia’s biodiversity crisis deepens, Dr Roycroft’s work feels not just timely but essential. “The genome,” she says, “is one of the most honest stories we have of the past. When it comes to threatened species, it’s important that we learn those lessons with time to act on them. With the right funding and conservation attention, we can do something to turn the tide on extinction before it’s too late.”
Further information
Silvia Dropulich
Marketing, Media & Communications Manager, Monash Science
T: +61 3 9902 4513 M: +61 435 138 743
Email: silvia.dropulich@monash.edu