Angela T. Moles

Angela Tina Moles is a New Zealand ecologist, evolutionary biologist and science communicator who worked in Australia since 1998. She is professor of botany and ecology and leads the Big Ecology Lab at the University of New South Wales.

Education Moles graduated from Victoria University of Wellington in 1997 with a BSc. She then completed a PhD at Macquarie University in 2004, with a thesis titled "The Seed Size Synthesis". In 2006 she undertook a postgraduate diploma in higher education, focusing on biological sciences.

Career On completion of her PhD, Moles remained at Macquarie University where she continued her study of seed size. She moved to the University of New South Wales in 2007 where from her research she concluded that 92% vines worldwide twisted anticlockwise, contrary to predictions that they would follow the Coriolis effect or the sun.

Moles presented "Our Relationship with Weeds" at TEDxSydney in 2012.

For the World Herbivory Project, Moles visited 75 ecosystems around the world and assessed how animals and plants interact. She has also studied the evolutionary changes in plants introduced to Australia. In 2018 Moles was awarded the Australian Ecology Research Award by the Ecological Society of Australia in recognition of her contribution to "major advances in the development of understanding of global patterns in ecology". She was awarded the 2021 Nancy Millis Medal for Women in Science by the Australian Academy of Science.

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