Advancements in noninvasive koala monitoring through combining Chlamydia detection with a targeted koala genotyping assay.

Wildlife diseases are major players in local and global extinctions. Effective disease surveillance, management and conservation strategies require accurate estimates of pathogen prevalence. Yet pathogen detection in wild animals remains challenging.

Biodiversity impacts of the 2019-2020 Australian megafires.

With large wildfires becoming more frequent, we must rapidly learn how megafires impact biodiversity to prioritize mitigation and improve policy. A key challenge is to discover how interactions among fire-regime components, drought and land tenure shape wildfire impacts. The globally unprecedented 2019-2020 Australian megafires burnt more than 10 million hectares, prompting major investment in biodiversity monitoring.

Susceptibility to a sexually transmitted disease in a wild koala population shows heritable genetic variance but no inbreeding depression.

The koala, one of the most iconic Australian wildlife species, is facing several concomitant threats that are driving population declines. Some threats are well known and have clear methods of prevention (e.g.

Testing the effectiveness of genetic monitoring using genetic non-invasive sampling.

Effective conservation requires accurate data on population genetic diversity, inbreeding, and genetic structure. Increasingly, scientists are adopting genetic non-invasive sampling (gNIS) as a cost-effective population-wide genetic monitoring approach. gNIS has, however, known limitations which may impact the accuracy of downstream genetic analyses.

Cross-continental emergence of Nannizziopsis barbatae disease may threaten wild Australian lizards.

Members of the genus Nannizziopsis are emerging fungal pathogens of reptiles that have been documented as the cause of fatal mycoses in a wide range of reptiles in captivity. Cases of severe, proliferative dermatitis, debility and death have been detected in multiple free-living lizard species from locations across Australia, including a substantial outbreak among Eastern water dragons (Intellagama lesueurii) in Brisbane, Queensland. We investigated this disease in a subset of severely affected lizards and identified a clinically consistent syndrome characterized by hyperkeratosis, epidermal hyperplasia, dermal inflammation, necrosis, ulceration, and emaciation.

Inbreeding and disease avoidance in a free-ranging koala population.

Habitat destruction and fragmentation are increasing globally, forcing surviving species into small, isolated populations. Isolated populations typically experience heightened inbreeding risk and associated inbreeding depression and population decline; although individuals in these populations may mitigate these risks through inbreeding avoidance strategies. For koalas, as dietary specialists already under threat in the northern parts of their range, increased habitat fragmentation and associated inbreeding costs are of great conservation concern.

Disease avoidance, and breeding group age and size condition the dispersal patterns of western lowland gorilla females.

Social dispersal is an important feature of population dynamics. When female mammals occur in polygynous groups, their dispersal decisions are conditioned by various female-, male-, and group-related factors. Among them, the influence of disease often remains difficult to assess.

Developing noninvasive methodologies to assess koala population health through detecting Chlamydia from scats.

Wildlife diseases are a recognized driver of global biodiversity loss, have substantial economic impacts, and are increasingly becoming a threat to human health. Disease surveillance is critical but remains difficult in the wild due to the substantial costs and potential biases associated with most disease detection methods. Noninvasive scat surveys have been proposed as a health monitoring methodology to overcome some of these limitations.

Fresh is best: Accurate SNP genotyping from koala scats.

Maintaining genetic diversity is a crucial component in conserving threatened species. For the iconic Australian koala, there is little genetic information on wild populations that is not either skewed by biased sampling methods (e.g.

Using demographic characteristics of populations to detect spatial fragmentation following suspected ebola outbreaks in great apes.

Objectives: Demographic crashes due to emerging diseases can contribute to population fragmentation and increase extinction risk of small populations. Ebola outbreaks in 2002-2004 are suspected to have caused a decline of more than 80% in some Western lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) populations. We investigated whether demographic indicators of this event allowed for the detection of spatial fragmentation in gorilla populations.

Accuracy and efficiency of detection dogs: a powerful new tool for koala conservation and management.

Accurate data on presence/absence and spatial distribution for fauna species is key to their conservation. Collecting such data, however, can be time consuming, laborious and costly, in particular for fauna species characterised by low densities, large home ranges, cryptic or elusive behaviour. For such species, including koalas (Phascolarctos cinereus), indicators of species presence can be a useful shortcut: faecal pellets (scats), for instance, are widely used.

How Ebola impacts social dynamics in gorillas: a multistate modelling approach.

Emerging infectious diseases can induce rapid changes in population dynamics and threaten population persistence. In socially structured populations, the transfers of individuals between social units, for example, from breeding groups to non-breeding groups, shape population dynamics. We suggest that diseases may affect these crucial transfers.

Potential 'ecological traps' of restored landscapes: koalas Phascolarctos cinereus re-occupy a rehabilitated mine site.

With progressively increasing anthropogenic habitat disturbances, restoration of impacted landscapes is becoming a critical element of biodiversity conservation. Evaluation of success in restoration ecology rarely includes faunal components, usually only encompassing abiotic and floral components of the ecosystems. Even when fauna is explicitly included, it is usually only species presence/absence criteria that are considered.

Recovery potential of a western lowland gorilla population following a major Ebola outbreak: results from a ten year study.

Investigating the recovery capacity of wildlife populations following demographic crashes is of great interest to ecologists and conservationists. Opportunities to study these aspects are rare due to the difficulty of monitoring populations both before and after a demographic crash. Ebola outbreaks in central Africa have killed up to 95% of the individuals in affected western lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) populations.