Landscape Homogeneity May Drive the Distribution of Koala Vehicle Collisions on a Major Highway in the Clarke-Connors Range in Central Queensland, Australia.

After the loss and fragmentation of habitat, vehicle collisions are one of the main threats to the long-term survival of wild koalas. Koala road strike data were analysed for a section of the Peak Downs Highway between Nebo and Spencer's Gap, west of Mackay, Queensland, Australia. The analysis was carried out on 345 records (October 2014 to November 2023), and results suggested the spatial distribution of koala road strike followed a random pattern along this section of the highway, assuming a Poisson point pattern on a linear network.

Horse populations are severely underestimated in a region at risk of Hendra virus spillover.

Objective: To identify the size and distribution of the horse population in the Northern Rivers Region of NSW, including changes from 2007 to 2021, to better understand populations at risk of Hendra virus transmission.

Methods: Census data from the 2007 Equine Influenza (EI) outbreak were compared with data collected annually by New South Wales Local Land Services (LLS) (2011-2021), and with field observations via road line transects (2021).

Results: The horse populations reported to LLS in 2011 (3000 horses; 0.

Intergenomic signatures of coevolution between Tasmanian devils and an infectious cancer.

Coevolution is common and frequently governs host-pathogen interaction outcomes. Phenotypes underlying these interactions often manifest as the combined products of the genomes of interacting species, yet traditional quantitative trait mapping approaches ignore these intergenomic interactions. Devil facial tumor disease (DFTD), an infectious cancer afflicting Tasmanian devils (), has decimated devil populations due to universal host susceptibility and a fatality rate approaching 100%.

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.