Category: Elliott Trapping

Tune in for Amy's and Saumya's PhD confirmation seminars on Friday 10 May

9/5/2019

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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The 2018-19 fieldwork season kicks off with mixed results

26/11/2018

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A multi-faceted team of reptile, mammal and bat-trappers recently headed out west for a week of fieldwork highs, disappointments and everything in between.

In terms of animal numbers, Taylor and Holly's sites were most bountiful, with 35 reptiles falling into pitfall or funnel traps. Microbats appeared in Amanda's harp traps in dribs and drabs until she hit a bumper night of 19 animals, resulting in 25 for the week. A very promising start to the season although microbat ID makes peering at skink scales seem terribly straight forward.

One thousand two hundred and fifty Elliott-trap nights yielded one very special Yellow-footed Antechinus plus two mildly confused Shinglebacks. We are hopeful that Amy, Rachel, Saumya and Julian's mammoth efforts will be rewarded soon, and that the low trap success reflects the time of year. Kelvin experienced similarly low animal numbers this time last year, and Rachel had heath mice coming out of her ears during her pilot study in March.

We're currently seeking volunteers for our programme of almost back-to-back trapping over the next few months. Food, basic accommodation, and transport from Ballarat or Creswick are provided. Please let us know if you're interested, and keep an eye on the facebook page for details of specific trips.

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Another PhD completion! Congratulations to Kate Parkins!

24/4/2018

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Kate presented her PhD completion seminar last week and is a (possum) whisker away from submitting her thesis. Her research focussed on edges, which are ecologically important environmental features that have been well researched in agricultural and urban landscapes but remain poorly understood in natural systems.

Fire is an agent of edge creation and a globally important driver of biome distribution and community composition, yet little is known about how fire edges affect ecological processes in flammable ecosystems. While edge effects and faunal-fire responses have been well studied independently, how animals respond to fire edges remains poorly understood.

Kate's thesis explores this knowledge gap focusing on the influence of fire edges on fauna, and discusses some methodological advances for ecological field studies. Her study sites were in Victoria's beautiful Central Highlands where she invested enormous energy installing remote cameras, trapping bush rats and agile antechinus, and fitting pesky-but-cute mountain brushtail possums with GPS collars. The possums in particular played very hard to get, but Kate's persistence paid off and she's currently putting the finishing touches on her analyses.

Congratulations Kate on your epic achievement!

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Contrasting responses of small mammals to fire and topographic refugia

29/4/2016

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Bush rat

Agile antechinus

Unburnt patches are expected to provide an important resource for fauna, potentially acting as a refuge from the direct effects of fire, and allowing animals to persist in burnt landscapes. Nevertheless there is little information about the way refugia are used by fauna and how populations may be affected by them.

In our new paper, we tested three alternative hypotheses relating to the abundance of two small mammal species, bush rat (Rattus fuscipes) and agile antechinus (Antechinus agilis), after a planned fire at Henderson Creek in the Otway Ranges:

Active refugia – increased abundance in unburnt patches due to a post-fire shift of individuals from burnt to unburnt areas
Passive refugia – abundance in unburnt patches would remain similar to pre-fire levels, and,
Limited or no refugia – reduced abundance in unburnt patches related to the change induced by fire in the wider landscape.

We surveyed small mammals using Elliott Traps, and found that the two species responded differently to the presence of unburnt refugia in the landscape. Whilst fire resulted in reduced abundance of bush rats on burnt slopes, there was no change in gullies, suggesting that their use of refugia is passive. In contrast, agile antechinus abundance increased in gullies immediately post-fire, consistent with a shift of individuals from burnt parts of the landscape and suggesting active use of refugia.

Our work highlights that different species' responses to patchy disturbances are likely to be influenced by factors such as site fidelity, habitat use and intraspecific competition.

Find the paper in Early View:

Swan, M., Galindez-Silva, C., Christie, F., York, A. & Di Stefano, J. (in press). Contrasting responses of small mammals to fire and topographic refugia. Austral Ecology.

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How does planned fire affect bush rat movement and resource selection?

1/3/2016

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Small mammals select resources based on their requirements for food, shelter and protection from predators. Understanding the influence of fire on resource selection can help to guide species conservation and management.

Our new paper investigates the effects of a planned fire on resource selection, abundance, body condition, and movement pathways of a native rodent, the bush rat (Rattus fuscipes). This work formed Amber Fordyce's Honours thesis, and involved gathering data from 60 individuals fitted with spool-and-line tracking devices at Breakfast Creek in the Otway Ranges.

After the fire, rats selected patches of unburnt vegetation, and no rats were caught at a trapping site where most of the understory had been burnt. The fire also reduced bush rat abundance and body condition and caused movement pathways to become more convoluted. After the fire, some individuals moved through burnt areas but the majority of movements occurred within unburnt patches.

Our findings suggest the influence of planned fire on small mammals will depend on the resulting mosaic of burnt and unburnt patches and how well this corresponds to the resource requirements of particular species.

Thanks to Amber, Bronwyn and Julian for the photos. Find the paper here:

Fordyce, A., Hradsky, B.A., Ritchie, E. & Di Stefano, J. (2016). Fire affects microhabitat selection, movement patterns and body condition of an Australian rodent (Rattus fuscipes). Journal of Mammalogy. 97(1): 102-111

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The animal chase continues in 2016

6/1/2016

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Our 2016 fieldwork program has already kicked off with a team of seven visiting the Otways to help Hilman and Natasha measure vegetation structure and trap small mammals.

Hilman is nearing the end of a mammoth effort to deploy camera traps and measure vegetation at 130 long-term monitoring sites spanning foothills forest, forby forest, tall-mixed woodland and heathland. His Masters research examines the influence of time since fire and habitat structure on the functional diversity of ground-dwelling mammals, and will reveal the attributes of prescribed burns that are likely to enhance ecosystem function.

Natasha has recently begun fieldwork for her Masters project which seeks to test species distribution models for mammals in heathland, where several species appear to have become locally extinct or persist in very small numbers. She is using Elliott traps to target small mammals, and plans to create new models of species' current distributions.

Please contact us if you are interested in joining a field trip as a volunteer. Our Otways fieldwork is finishing shortly, but several opportunities are coming up in the Central Highlands.

Many thanks to Matt and Natasha for these photos.

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How does habitat structure influence animal responses to fire?

5/5/2015

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Predicting the effects of fire on biota is important for biodiversity conservation. Time since fire is often used to predict the occurrence of fauna, yet for many species it is change in resource availability to which animals actually respond. If resource availability is only weakly related to time, prediction of fire-fauna relationships will be uncertain.

In our new paper available as an Ecological Applications Preprint, we used a large diverse landscape in the Otways to investigate relationships between ground-dwelling mammal occurrence, time since fire and habitat structure (a measure of resource availability).

We found that time since fire was moderately correlated with habitat structure yet was a poor surrogate for animal occurrence. Habitat structure was a better predictor of occurrence than time since fire for all species.

Our results suggest that time since fire is unlikely to be a useful surrogate for ground-dwelling mammals in diverse fire-prone landscapes, where biodiversity conservation will benefit from a combined understanding of (a) fauna-resource relationships and (b) the ways in which both planned fire and wildfire alter the availability of resources important to animals.

Swan, M., Christie, F.J., Sitters, H., York, A. & Di Stefano, J. (In press). Predicting faunal fire responses in heterogeneous landscapes: the role of habitat structure. Ecological Applications.

Southern Brown Bandicoot

Swamp Rat

Long-nosed Bandicoot

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Welcome to

Fire Ecology and

Biodiversity

Tune in for Amy's and Saumya's PhD confirmation seminars on Friday 10 May

The 2018-19 fieldwork season kicks off with mixed results

Another PhD completion! Congratulations to Kate Parkins!

Contrasting responses of small mammals to fire and topographic refugia

How does planned fire affect bush rat movement and resource selection?

The animal chase continues in 2016

How does habitat structure influence animal responses to fire?

Author

Archives

Categories

Links

Where to find us

University of Melbourne
4 Water Street
Creswick
Victoria 3363

Phone +61 (0)3 5321 4300 or email us

Welcome to Fire Ecology andBiodiversity

Tune in for Amy's and Saumya's PhD confirmation seminars on Friday 10 May

The 2018-19 fieldwork season kicks off with mixed results

Another PhD completion! Congratulations to Kate Parkins!

Contrasting responses of small mammals to fire and topographic refugia

How does planned fire affect bush rat movement and resource selection?

The animal chase continues in 2016

How does habitat structure influence animal responses to fire?

Author

Archives

Categories

Links

Where to find usUniversity of Melbourne4 Water StreetCreswickVictoria 3363Phone +61 (0)3 5321 4300 or email us

Welcome to

Fire Ecology and

Biodiversity

Where to find us

University of Melbourne
4 Water Street
Creswick
Victoria 3363

Phone +61 (0)3 5321 4300 or email us