Category: Camera Trapping

Mammal functional diversity increases across vegetation gradients

5/11/2018

Our new paper arose from Hilman Sukma's Masters research, and highlights the importance of structurally complex vegetation for mammal functional diversity.

Hilman used wildlife cameras to survey mammals in the Otway Ranges, and combined species occurrence data with ecological trait information to derive measures of functional diversity, which provides a link between species diversity and ecosystem function.

Mammal functional diversity responded positively to two measures of vegetation structural complexity in both wet and dry forest. Hilman concluded that conserving structurally complex vegetation may help to enhance ecosystem function.

The paper is free to download until 22 December:

Sukma, H., Di Stefano, J., Swan, M. & Sitters, H. (2019). Mammal functional diversity increases with vegetation structural complexity in two forest types. Forest Ecology and Management. 433: 85-92

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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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A holy grail for ecological fire management and research: What aspects of the fire regime make plants and animals tick?

25/2/2018

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Is that a ghostly presence on the right-hand-side or a tree stump?

Growth-stage optimisation determines the proportions of vegetation growth stages (categorical representations of time since fire) that maximise species diversity, providing an operational goal for fire managers. To date, optimisation has only been applied to growth stages in a fire management context but other aspects of fire regimes, such as severity, are also likely to influence species diversity.

In our new paper, we ask:
1 How do growth stage and fire severity influence plant and vertebrate species’ occurrence?
2 What mix of growth stages and fire severities maximises the diversity of these groups?

We surveyed birds, mammals and plants in the tall wet forest of Victoria’s Central Highlands, and found that growth stage predicted the occurrence of many species. Severity of the most recent fire was important over and above growth stage for a small subset of species; however, low-severity fire was a more important driver of species diversity than any other growth stage or severity category.

Growth stage is a good surrogate for developing conservation targets in tall wet forests, but does not capture the full range of species’ fire responses. More complex versions of growth stage optimisation that accommodate multiple fire-regime variables need to be explored to yield ecologically meaningful conservation goals.

Swan, M., Sitters, H., Cawson, J., Duff, T., Wibisono, Y. & York, A. (2018). Fire planning for multispecies conservation: Integrating growth stage and fire severity. Forest Ecology and Management 415-416: 85-97

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Is the Fire & Fragmentation Project honeymoon period over?

31/5/2017

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Evidence for

Evidence against

Having carefully balanced the evidence, we conclude that the honeymoon period lives on.

Last week the Fire & Fragmentation Project team ventured out to the heathy woodland between Dartmoor and Edenhope to set up their second round of camera traps. This work is part of Zahlia and Lauren's studies into the effects of fire and fragmentation on mammals. They are currently going through the photos from their first round of camera trapping, and will compile their favourites soon. Please stay tuned.

Thanks to Sarah, Lauren and Zahlia for providing all the evidence.

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Fieldwork fun and other spring pursuits

26/11/2015

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Alarmingly, it’s been two months since our last news item, so we’ve put together a collection of photos to illustrate some of our springtime activities.

Many thanks to Julio and Alan for these photos.

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27th International Congress for Conservation Biology

10/8/2015

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Holly attended the 27th International Congress for Conservation Biology in France this week to pose (and have a go at answering) the question: does patchy planned fire enhance ecosystem function?

She was among 2,000 attendees from 98 countries at the world’s largest ever conservation meeting, which was held in the middle of beautiful, buzzing Montpellier.

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Lyrebirds vs. Cameras

6/6/2015

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Superb lyrebirds (Menura novaehollandiae) are famous for mimicking the calls of other species, as well as chainsaws, car alarms and camera shutters.

Kate has recently discovered they also have a proclivity for attacking the cameras she’s using to study how fire edges influence animal distribution, abundance and movement in the Central Highlands.

She’s put together a video depicting a feisty encounter between a camera and a particularly determined individual.

The video contains prolonged scenes of strong violence and coarse language.

Watch at your peril.

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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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Fieldwork misadventures in Victoria's Central Highlands

11/4/2015

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Holly, Matt, Julian and Wibi headed out to the tall wet forest of Victoria's Central Highlands this week.

They finished deploying remote cameras at sites established to better understand how biodiversity varies among patches of different time since fire, and where data are available, fire severity.

They avoided the heavy rain of Tuesday 7th but not the oncoming traffic. Highlights included blue mushrooms and a 20-cm worm. This sounds like the product of hallucinations but they've provided photographic evidence.

Please let us know if you can ID the mushrooms.

Blue mushrooms

Meeting the locals

20 cm was the distance between its eyes

Fire-side gatherings are perfect opportunities for checking your cameras function correctly

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Welcome to

Fire Ecology and

Biodiversity

Mammal functional diversity increases across vegetation gradients

Another PhD completion! Congratulations to Kate Parkins!

A holy grail for ecological fire management and research: What aspects of the fire regime make plants and animals tick?

Is the Fire & Fragmentation Project honeymoon period over?

Evidence for

Evidence against

Fieldwork fun and other spring pursuits

27th International Congress for Conservation Biology

Lyrebirds vs. Cameras

How does habitat structure influence animal responses to fire?

Fieldwork misadventures in Victoria's Central Highlands

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

Evidence for

Evidence against

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