Early-career researchers (ECRs) make up a large portion of the academic workforce and their experiences often reflect the wider culture of the research system. Here we surveyed 658 ECRs working in Australia to better understand the needs and challenges faced by this community. Although most respondents indicated a ‘love of science’, many also expressed an intention to leave their research position. The responses highlight how job insecurity, workplace culture, mentorship and ‘questionable research practices’ are impacting the job satisfaction of ECRs and potentially compromising science in Australia. We also make recommendations for addressing some of these concerns.

1. The vertical distribution of plant tissues and the grazing responses of goats to five grass species differing in their physical and structural properties were analysed, with the aim of establishing how these affected the loss of tissue from the plant and the gains to herbivores.\ud \ud 2. The grass species varied more widely in canopy structure than their tissues vary in mechanical characteristics. Fine-leaved grasses had higher tiller numbers than broadleaved species and this largely determines the higher forces and energy required to graze them.\ud \ud 3. A lower proportion of plant tissue was removed in each bite taken from those grasses which demanded higher bite forces during defoliation.\ud \ud 4. It is calculated that the great majority of energy expenditure during grazing is in chewing the ingested vegetation, rather than in removing plant tissue from the sward. Energy gain exceeded predicted energy use during grazing to any depth in the sward and could not therefore explain why animals remove plant tissue only from the surface layer.\ud \ud 5. Large animals severed herbage closer to the ground surface than small animals and thus were apparently less constrained by the physical properties of the vegetation.\ud \ud 6. The balance between marginal energy intake rate and the additional force required for defoliation at greater depth offers an explanation for the extent of defoliation. The existence of a limit to the force an animal can apply is not a likely explanation for the determination of bite depth

Riparian clearing and the removal of wood from channels have affected many streams in agricultural landscapes. As a result, these streams often have depauperate in-stream wood loads, and therefore decreased habitat complexity and lower levels of in-stream biodiversity. The introduction of wood was investigated as a possible rehabilitation technique for agricultural streams. Wood was re-introduced to eight streams in two separate high-rainfall, intensively grazed regions of Victoria, Australia and the effect on aquatic macroinvertebrate communities was measured. The addition of wood increased overall family richness and the richness of most functional feeding groups occupying edge and benthic habitats within the stream. Wood addition led to less overlap between benthic and edge macroinvertebrate communities, suggesting increased habitat heterogeneity within the stream ecosystem. Of all sampled habitats, wood supported the greatest density of families and was colonised by all functional feeding groups. Wood habitats also had the highest overall richness and supported the most taxa that were sensitive to disturbance. These findings suggest that re-introducing wood to agricultural streams is an appropriate rehabilitation technique where those streams are affected by reduced habitat complexity. Additional work is needed to confirm these findings over larger spatial and temporal scales.