Camouflage or Coincidence? Investigating the Effects of Spatial and Temporal Environmental Features on Feral Cat Morphology in Tasmania.

Variations in coat morphology are well documented among felids and are theorised to aid in camouflage during stalk and ambush hunting. A diverse array of coat types has arisen in (feral cats) through domestication and subsequent selective breeding. This species has successfully spread across Australia over the past 200 years, raising the question of whether any specific coat types offer an adaptive advantage.

Seasonal and depth-dependent thermoregulatory benefits of burrows for wombats - The largest burrowing marsupials.

Mammals use burrows to behaviourally thermoregulate, save water, and avoid predation. The advantages of burrows vary not only seasonally but also with burrow depth. To quantify these effects, we used biophysical ecological models, which predict an animal's energetic and hydric costs within a characterised microclimate.

A non-invasive approach to measuring body dimensions of wildlife with camera traps: A felid field trial.

Dimensions of body size are an important measurement in animal ecology, although they can be difficult to obtain due to the effort and cost associated with the invasive nature of these measurements. We avoid these limitations by using camera trap images to derive dimensions of animal size. To obtain measurements of object dimensions using this method, the size of the object in pixels, the focal length of the camera, and the distance to that object must be known.

Association between land use, land cover, plant genera, and pollinator abundance in mixed-use landscapes.

Pollinators are threatened by land-use and land-cover changes, with the magnitude of the threat depending on the pollinating taxa, land-use type and intensity, the amount of natural habitat remaining, and the ecosystem considered. This study aims to determine the effect of land use (protected areas, plantations, pastures), land cover (percentage of forest and open areas within buffers of different sizes), and plant genera on the relative abundance of nectivorous birds (honeyeaters), bees (native and introduced), and beetles in the mixed-use landscape of the Tasman Peninsula (Tasmania, Australia) using mixed-effect models. We found the predictor selected (through model selection based on R2) and the effect of the predictors varied depending on the pollinating taxa.

Pesticides reduce tropical amphibian and reptile diversity in agricultural landscapes in Indonesia.

Pesticide use on tropical crops has increased substantially in recent decades, posing a threat to biodiversity and ecosystem services. Amphibians and reptiles are common in tropical agricultural landscapes, but few field studies measure pesticide impacts on these taxa. Here we combine 1-year of correlative data with an experimental field approach from Indonesia.

Resolving when (and where) the Thylacine went extinct.

Like the Dodo and Passenger Pigeon before it, the predatory marsupial Thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus), or 'Tasmanian tiger', has become an iconic symbol of anthropogenic extinction. The last captive animal died in 1936, but even today reports of the Thylacine's possible ongoing survival in remote regions of Tasmania are newsworthy and capture the public's imagination. Extirpated from mainland Australia in the mid-Holocene, the island of Tasmania became the species' final stronghold.

Dominant carnivore loss benefits native avian and invasive mammalian scavengers.

Scavenging by large carnivores is integral for ecosystem functioning by limiting the build-up of carrion and facilitating widespread energy flows. However, top carnivores have declined across the world, triggering trophic shifts within ecosystems. Here, we compare findings from previous work on predator decline against areas with recent native mammalian carnivore loss.

Signs of Rumpwear in the Common Ringtail Possum, Pseudocheirus peregrinus.

We report the physical characteristics of rumpwear in the Australian common ringtail possum, Pseudocheirus peregrinus. Rumpwear presents as varying grades of hair breakage and dermatitis on the lumbosacral region. This condition has been reported in Trichosurus spp.

Societal extinction of species.

The ongoing global biodiversity crisis not only involves biological extinctions, but also the loss of experience and the gradual fading of cultural knowledge and collective memory of species. We refer to this phenomenon as 'societal extinction of species' and apply it to both extinct and extant taxa. We describe the underlying concepts as well as the mechanisms and factors that affect this process, discuss its main implications, and identify mitigation measures.

Spatial pattern analysis of line-segment data in ecology.

The spatial analysis of linear features (lines and curves) is a challenging and rarely attempted problem in ecology. Existing methods are typically expressed in abstract mathematical formalism, making it difficult to assess their relevance and transferability into an ecological setting. We introduce a set of concrete and accessible methods to analyze the spatial patterning of line-segment data.

Process-explicit models reveal pathway to extinction for woolly mammoth using pattern-oriented validation.

Pathways to extinction start long before the death of the last individual. However, causes of early stage population declines and the susceptibility of small residual populations to extirpation are typically studied in isolation. Using validated process-explicit models, we disentangle the ecological mechanisms and threats that were integral in the initial decline and later extinction of the woolly mammoth.

Characterizing the spatio-temporal threats, conservation hotspots and conservation gaps for the most extinction-prone bird family (Aves: Rallidae).

With thousands of vertebrate species now threatened with extinction, there is an urgent need to understand and mitigate the causes of wildlife collapse. Rails (Aves: Rallidae), being the most extinction-prone bird family globally, and with one-third of extant rail species now threatened or near threatened, are an emphatic case in point. Here, we undertook a global synthesis of the temporal and spatial threat patterns for Rallidae and determined conservation priorities and gaps.

Parsimonious model selection using information theory: a modified selection rule.

Information-theoretic approaches to model selection, such as Akaike's information criterion (AIC) and cross validation, provide a rigorous framework to select among candidate hypotheses in ecology, yet the persistent concern of overfitting undermines the interpretation of inferred processes. A common misconception is that overfitting is due to the choice of criterion or model score, despite research demonstrating that selection uncertainty associated with score estimation is the predominant influence. Here we introduce a novel selection rule that identifies a parsimonious model by directly accounting for estimation uncertainty, while still retaining an information-theoretic interpretation.

The Patterns and Causes of Dermatitis in Terrestrial and Semi-Aquatic Mammalian Wildlife.

Causative disease and stress agents which manifest as dermatitis in mammals have varying effects on individual animals, from benign irritation and inflammation, to causing morbidity and even mortality. Bacteria, viruses and ectoparasites are all potential causes of dermatitis, and it can be exacerbated by various environmental, genetic and social factors. Furthermore, it is uncertain whether dermatitis is more likely to manifest in already-vulnerable wildlife species.

Roadkill islands: Carnivore extinction shifts seasonal use of roadside carrion by generalist avian scavenger.

Global road networks facilitate habitat modification and are integral to human expansion. Many animals, particularly scavengers, use roads as they provide a reliable source of food, such as carrion left after vehicle collisions. Tasmania is often cited as the 'roadkill capital of Australia', with the isolated offshore islands in the Bass Strait experiencing similar, if not higher, levels of roadkill.

Accidents alter animal fitness landscapes.

Animals alter their habitat use in response to the energetic demands of movement ('energy landscapes') and the risk of predation ('the landscape of fear'). Recent research suggests that animals also select habitats and move in ways that minimise their chance of temporarily losing control of movement and thereby suffering slips, falls, collisions or other accidents, particularly when the consequences are likely to be severe (resulting in injury or death). We propose that animals respond to the costs of an 'accident landscape' in conjunction with predation risk and energetic costs when deciding when, where, and how to move in their daily lives.

Quantifying 25 years of disease-caused declines in Tasmanian devil populations: host density drives spatial pathogen spread.

Infectious diseases are strong drivers of wildlife population dynamics, however, empirical analyses from the early stages of pathogen emergence are rare. Tasmanian devil facial tumour disease (DFTD), discovered in 1996, provides the opportunity to study an epizootic from its inception. We use a pattern-oriented diffusion simulation to model the spatial spread of DFTD across the species' range and quantify population effects by jointly modelling multiple streams of data spanning 35 years.

Roughing it: terrain is crucial in identifying novel translocation sites for the vulnerable brush-tailed rock-wallaby ().

Translocations-the movement of species from one place to another-are likely to become more common as conservation attempts to protect small isolated populations from threats posed by extreme events such as bushfires. The recent Australian mega-fires burnt almost 40% of the habitat of the brush-tailed rock-wallaby (), a threatened species whose distribution is already restricted, primarily due to predation by invasive species. This chronic threat of over-predation, coupled with the possible extinction of the genetically distinct southern population (approx.

Identifying island safe havens to prevent the extinction of the World's largest lizard from global warming.

The Komodo dragon () is an endangered, island-endemic species with a naturally restricted distribution. Despite this, no previous studies have attempted to predict the effects of climate change on this iconic species. We used extensive Komodo dragon monitoring data, climate, and sea-level change projections to build spatially explicit demographic models for the Komodo dragon.

Using paleo-archives to safeguard biodiversity under climate change.

Strategies for 21st-century environmental management and conservation under global change require a strong understanding of the biological mechanisms that mediate responses to climate- and human-driven change to successfully mitigate range contractions, extinctions, and the degradation of ecosystem services. Biodiversity responses to past rapid warming events can be followed in situ and over extended periods, using cross-disciplinary approaches that provide cost-effective and scalable information for species' conservation and the maintenance of resilient ecosystems in many bioregions. Beyond the intrinsic knowledge gain such integrative research will increasingly provide the context, tools, and relevant case studies to assist in mitigating climate-driven biodiversity losses in the 21st century and beyond.

Urbanisation reduces the abundance and diversity of airborne microbes - but what does that mean for our health? A systematic review.

Over half of people live in cities and while urban environments offer myriad social, cultural and economic benefits, they alter the microbial communities to which people are exposed: with potentially important but underexplored health impacts. In particular, higher rates of asthma and allergies in urban areas have been linked to urban-altered microbial communities - including aerial microbial communities. To date, however, there has been no synthesis of the disparate literature on the impacts of urbanisation on aerial microbial communities, making it difficult to ascertain potential health impacts.

iEcology: Harnessing Large Online Resources to Generate Ecological Insights.

Digital data are accumulating at unprecedented rates. These contain a lot of information about the natural world, some of which can be used to answer key ecological questions. Here, we introduce iEcology (i.

Ecosystem-Based Tsunami Mitigation for Tropical Biodiversity Hotspots.

Inclusion of ecosystem-based approaches in the governmental masterplan for tsunami mitigation in Palu, Indonesia may make the city a rare case study for ecological disaster risk reduction in tropical biodiversity hotspots. Such case studies are a key pillar of the United Nations (UN) Sendai Framework to protect coastal societies globally.

Urban-associated diseases: Candidate diseases, environmental risk factors, and a path forward.

Background: Cities are home to over half the global population; that proportion is expected to rise to 70% by mid-century. The urban environment differs greatly from that in which humans evolved, with potentially important consequences for health. Rates for allergic, inflammatory and auto-immune diseases appear to rise with urbanization and be higher in the more urbanized nations of the world which has led some to suggest that cities promote the occurrence of these diseases.