Rate My Professor Sarah Hill

Dr. Sarah Hill serves as a Research Fellow and Insect Ecology Lab manager at the Natural History Museum, University of New England in Armidale, Australia. She completed her PhD in Botany at the University of New England from 2007 to 2011, focusing on soil seed banks and plant ecology, and earned a Master of Science from the University of Wollongong. Affiliated with the School of Environmental and Rural Science, Hill is recognized as a fire ecologist who has spent years studying the soil seed banks of plant communities and their responses to environmental disturbances such as fire. Her work examines how factors like seed size affect germination under simulated post-fire soil temperatures, as explored in her 2020 publication 'Seed size an important factor for the germination response of legume seeds subjected to simulated post-fire soil temperatures' in Wildfire.

Hill's research portfolio includes significant contributions to insect ecology, climate change impacts on terrestrial flora and fauna, and global airborne fungal dynamics. She has co-authored high-impact papers such as 'Airborne DNA reveals predictable spatial and seasonal dynamics in airborne fungal communities' in Nature (2024) and 'A global, standardized dataset of airborne fungal DNA' in Scientific Data (2024). Additional key publications feature 'Estimating the differences in critical thermal maximum and metabolic rate of Helicoverpa punctigera (Wallengren) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) across life stages' in PeerJ (2021), investigations into dung beetle species introductions and ecosystem engineering (PeerJ, 2020), and studies on the physiological consequences of varied heat exposure for aphids (Journal of Experimental Biology, 2016). With over 1,300 citations on Google Scholar, her collaborative efforts with the Insect Ecology Lab, including Nigel R. Andrew, have advanced understanding of arthropod community structure, herbivore damage along latitudinal gradients, ant-mediated dispersal, and thermal tolerances in insects. Hill also supports technical aspects of projects like thermolimit respirometry and global spore sampling.