Please come along to Amy's and Saumya's PhD confirmation seminars to hear about their plans to better understand how landscape structure, fire and resource availability influence ground-dwelling mammal population persistence. Join person or via Zoom. Where: Small Lecture Theatre, Room 123, Uni Building, Creswick When: 10.30-11.30 am, Friday 10 May Both their projects involve measurement of vegetation structure in the beautiful heathy woodland of western Victoria and eastern South Australia. If you'd like to volunteer to help with data collection between July and October, please get in touch! |
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Manuela gave her completion seminar on Friday and is moments away from submitting her thesis. Her exciting project involved use of GPS data and experimental exclosures to investigate resource selection, road crossing behaviour and browsing impact of the abundant native swamp wallaby. Her study took place on Phillip Island, a landscape of natural and human-modified patches, dissected by roads. She found that wallabies modulate their selection of resources on a circadian basis to optimise the use of resources under anthropogenic disturbance. Although natural vegetation patches are likely to be used, patches of high anthropogenic disturbances are tolerated at night, when disturbances are less. She also showed that roads are avoided, especially during the day and that crossings are more likely when tree cover is high and water further away from the crossing location. Further, she demonstrated that in vegetation patches, wallabies suppress weed diversity, but do not influence native species diversity. Her work has shed substantial light on the behaviour of Phillip Island's booming wallaby population. Well done Manuela on your inspiring work! |
AuthorFire Ecology and Biodiversity at UniMelb Archives
July 2022
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LinksBushfire Behaviour and Management at UniMelb
Quantitative & Applied Ecology Group at UniMelb
Integrated Forest Ecosystem Research at UniMelb
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