Rate My Professor Lyndon Brooks

Dr. Lyndon Brooks serves as an Adjunct Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Southern Cross University, where he earned his PhD in 1998 with a thesis entitled "A multivariate approach to social categorization research." He holds a Bachelor of Arts with Honours from Macquarie University. Previously serving as University Statistician at Southern Cross University, Brooks specializes in ecological statistics and research methodology. His research interests include population ecology of marine mammals, particularly humpback whales and dolphins in Australian waters, using photo-identification and capture-recapture techniques to assess abundance and movements. He has contributed to studies on the vulnerability of threatened Australian humpback dolphins to flooding and port development within the southern Great Barrier Reef region, migratory movements of individual humpback whales off the eastern coast of Australia, and social behaviour of humpback whales in Hervey Bay. Additional areas encompass physical activity and motor skill interventions for children, mentoring for effective primary science teaching, health impacts of pesticide exposure, and osteoarthritis treatments.

Brooks has produced 99 research items, accumulating over 6,500 citations according to Google Scholar. His most influential publications feature "Childhood motor skill proficiency as a predictor of adolescent physical activity" (Barnett et al., 2009, 1,500 citations), "Does childhood motor skill proficiency predict adolescent fitness?" (Barnett et al., 2008, 680 citations), "Gender differences in motor skill proficiency from childhood to adolescence: A longitudinal study" (Barnett et al., 2010, 537 citations), "Development of an instrument: Mentoring for effective primary science teaching (MEPST)" (Hudson, Skamp, and Brooks, 2005, 235 citations), and "Abundance of humpback whales in Oceania using photo-identification and microsatellite genotyping" (Constantine et al., 2012, 136 citations). Recent contributions include "Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) in Hervey Bay, Australia: a stopover for females early in their southern migration" (2024) and "Social Behaviour of Humpback Whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) in Hervey Bay, Eastern Australia" (2021). Currently a consultant at StatPlan Consulting Pty Ltd, he applies statistical expertise to ecological and health studies. In 2009, he organized a workshop at Southern Cross University on science supporting marine mammal conservation.