News - Fire Ecology and Biodiversity

Fire Ecology and Biodiversity

Congratulations to our prize winners!

4/12/2019

Congratulations to Annalie and Rachel who were awarded the Ecological Management and Restoration prizes for best presentation and best poster (respectively) at the Ecological Society of Australia's annual conference last Friday.

Annalie did an amazing job of distilling a complex analysis into a neat story about how edge contrast between patches of different time-since-fire benefited mammal species richness in the Otway Ranges. Rachel's eye-catching poster described a love triangle between fire, resource availability and the endangered heath mouse, making for another juicy ecological story!

Congratulations to everyone presenting at the Ecological Society of Australia conference this week

27/11/2019

Eight of our PhD and Masters students are presenting their work at the Ecological Society of Australia's annual conference in Launceston, Tasmania, this week.

This year's conference theme is Ecology: science for practical solutions and it spans six action-packed days. It's a wonderful forum for our students to talk about their work and get feedback from the wider ecological community.

Some of the team even found energy to walk along Cataract Gorge, providing a lovely opportunity to check out Launceston's beautiful scenery, spot some local birds, and take a few selfies!

The Fire Ecology and Biodiversity Group is now on Instagram!

28/10/2019

Come follow our adventures @fireecologyandbiodiversity

Volunteer opportunity in the spectacular Mount Lofty Ranges

15/10/2019

We're gearing up for a bumper field season and Simeon is seeking volunteers to help with his research into mammals, fire and fragmentation in the Mount Lofty Ranges near Adelaide. Field trips will involve habitat surveys, and/or setting up cameras and hair tube traps.

Please contact Simeon if you're keen to help out or would like further information, and keep your eyes on the facebook page for updates on volunteer opportunities.

Tiny orange clover mites remind us there's more to biodiversity than meets the eye

5/7/2019

Saumya deployed 5 small pitfall traps at 112 sites near Casterton during the summer field season, and now faces the daunting task of sorting through the sample jars with Julio's help.

Enthusiasm levels are high thanks to a funky orange clover mite (Bryobia spp.), who they found in one of the first sample jars. Clover mites are relatives of spiders and bed bugs, and only females are likely to appear in samples because they reproduce via parthenogenesis, meaning an unfertilised egg can develop into an embryo.

Saumya is interested in how fire history and insect biomass affect the abundance of insect-eating small mammals, like yellow-footed antechinus (Antechinus flavipes). Sadly for the clover mite, she is just a meal (or perhaps a snack) from an antechinus's perspective.

Stay tuned for further updates on cool microscopic critters.

600 delegates gather at the Biodiversity Across the Borders Conference

16/6/2019

Congratulations to Sandra, Simeon and Rachel for their engaging oral and poster presentations, and to Matt for his role as MC in the fire ecology session.

The biennial Biodiversity Across the Borders Conference is hosted by Federation University, only a stone's throw from us in Mt Helen, south of Ballarat. This year's conference theme was Climate Change and Future Landscapes, and provided an excellent opportunity to share emerging applied research among a broad audience comprising natural resource managers, the research community and conservation enthusiasts.

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!

Seeking volunteers to help with wildlife cameras in the beautiful Mount Lofty Ranges

7/3/2019

Following a successful PhD confirmation seminar last week, Simeon plans to hit the field over the next few months to deploy wildlife cameras in South Australia's Mount Lofty Ranges.

Please find details below, and contact Simeon for more information.

Tune in for Simeon Zylinski's PhD confirmation seminar on Friday 1 March

26/2/2019

Please come along to Simeon's PhD confirmation seminar to hear about his plans to disentangle the effects of fire and landscape structure on mammal communities.

Join person or via Zoom.

Where: Small Lecture Theatre, Room 123, Uni Building, Creswick
When: 10 am, Friday 1 March

Simeon's project involves camera trapping and collection of bandicoot DNA samples. If you'd like to volunteer to help with data collection in the spectacular Mount Lofty Ranges between March and May, please get in touch!

How might fire influence vegetation diversity over the next 60 years?

16/1/2019

In our new paper , which formed part of Matt Chick's PhD, we used a landscape succession and disturbance simulation model to estimate changes in vegetation diversity under alternative scenarios of planned fire and wildfire over a 60-year period.

We surveyed vegetation diversity among different post-fire growth stages in heathy woodland, and used optimisation to determine the proportions of growth stages that would maximise species diversity. Pairing optimisation with the simulation model allowed us to identify the cumulative effects of different fire-regime scenarios on vegetation diversity.

The best scenario for vegetation diversity was 5% prescribed burning per year (with and without wildfire) which resulted in diversity values close to the theoretical maximum. Trends across the 60 years showed that wildfire depressed diversity and subsequent prescribed fire drove recovery within 15 years. The largest threat to vegetation diversity was the absence of fire.

Our method provides a flexible platform for developing long‐term fire management strategies that seek to balance human safety and biodiversity conservation.

Find out more: Chick, M., York, A., Sitters, H., Di Stefano, J. & Nitschke, C. (in press). The cumulative impacts of prescribed burning and wildfire on vegetation diversity. Journal of Applied Ecology.