Rick Shine is a Laureate Fellow of the Australian Research Council and a professor of biology at the University of Sydney. He has conducted extensive field-based research on reptiles in many parts of the world. When invasive cane toads arrived at his research site in tropical Australia in 2005, where he had studied snakes for over 20 years, he set out to understand the risk posed by these alien amphibians. Since then, Rick has spearheaded a multifaceted research initiative on the biology, impact and control of cane toads in Australia. The major thrust of his current research involves approaching conservation challenges from an evolutionary perspective, and embedded within a detailed understanding of reptile and amphibian biology.