Dinner Club: Who Still Dines?

Welcome to Dinner Club, where we gather over communal sharing of food to discuss big ideas. In this first event, Who Still Dines?, Jane Melville (Museums Victoria Senior Curator) and Roy Ebel (Doctoral Researcher in Evolutionary Biology and Ecology) explore how armoured lizards and other reptiles avoid ending up on the menu.

Enjoy a complimentary meal and drink, meet new people, and learn some survival strategies—just in case dinner ever tries to bite back.

Presented in partnership with 18+ Melbourne Museum’s Nocturnal: Museum After Dark.

🎟️ Purchase your tickets HERE ($10 per person)

This is an 18+ only event. Valid government issued ID will be requested upon attempt to purchase alcohol. UMSU promotes the safe and responsible use and service of alcohol.

About the talk

After exploring the ways reptiles defend themselves from becoming prey, Who Still Dines invites us to reflect on communal eating, the role of predators in ecosystems, and what it means when we have none outside ourselves. Two very different takes on food—but both raising big questions. Jane Melville and Roy Ebel discuss reptiles and the remarkable defence mechanisms they employ to avoid becoming lunch. Lizards have so many amazing ways of avoiding being eaten, from startling defence behaviours to body armour. Bone plates embedded in their skin are a particularly intriguing feature, giving rise to fascinating questions of evolution. Join us on an incredible journey as we explore a world of oddly armoured wonders.

About the presenters

Dr Jane Melville AM

Senior Curator, Terrestrial Vertebrates, Museums Victoria Research Institute

Dr Melville’s research combines field-based studies on reptiles and amphibians across conservation, genetics, ecology, taxonomy and evolution. Jane is currently running genetics projects aimed at the conservation of endangered reptiles and frogs, such as grassland earless dragons. She is also an expert on dragon lizards and has described and revised more than thirty species.

Roy Ebel, MSc.

Doctoral Researcher with the Australian National University and Museums Victoria

Roy is an evolutionary biologist and morphologist. His research focuses on the study of bone structure in reptiles by means of micro-computed tomography (micro-CT scanning). Roy's research contributes to our understanding of how selective pressures and functional constraints in the deep past formed present-day biodiversity.