Using data calibration to reconcile outputs from different survey methods in long-term or large-scale studies.

Understanding the impact of management interventions on the environment over decadal and longer timeframes is urgently required. Longitudinal or large-scale studies with consistent methods are best practice, but more commonly, small datasets with differing methods are used to achieve larger coverage. Changes in methods and interpretation affect our ability to understand data trends through time or across space, so an ability to understand and adjust for such discrepancies between datasets is important for applied ecologists.

When less is more: a comparison of models to predict fluoride accumulation in free-ranging kangaroos.

Vegetation contaminated by industrial fluoride emissions can cause disease in herbivorous mammals. Spatially explicit exposure models offer a quantitative approach for evaluating and managing the potentially toxic effects of chronic fluoride consumption on wildlife. We monitored eastern grey kangaroos (Macropus giganteus) inhabiting a high-fluoride environment in the buffer zone of an aluminium smelter in southeastern Australia between 2010 and 2013.

Identifying species at coextinction risk when detection is imperfect: Model evaluation and case study.

Losing a species from a community can cause further extinctions, a process also known as coextinction. The risk of being extirpated with an interaction partner is commonly inferred from a species' host-breadth, derived from observing interactions between species. But observational data suffers from imperfect detection, making coextinction estimates highly unreliable.

Dental fluorosis and skeletal fluoride content as biomarkers of excess fluoride exposure in marsupials.

Particulate and gaseous fluoride emissions contaminate vegetation near fluoride-emitting industries, potentially impacting herbivorous wildlife in neighboring areas. Dental fluorosis has been associated with consumption of fluoride-contaminated foliage by juvenile livestock and wildlife in Europe and North America. For the first time, we explored the epidemiology and comparative pathology of dental fluorosis in Australian marsupials residing near an aluminium smelter.

The neglected tool in the Bayesian ecologist's shed: a case study testing informative priors' effect on model accuracy.

Despite benefits for precision, ecologists rarely use informative priors. One reason that ecologists may prefer vague priors is the perception that informative priors reduce accuracy. To date, no ecological study has empirically evaluated data-derived informative priors' effects on precision and accuracy.

Public investment does not crowd out private supply of environmental goods on private land.

In landscapes where private land tenure is prevalent, public funds for ecological landscape restoration are sometimes spent subsidising the revegetation of cleared land, and the protection of remnant vegetation from livestock. However, the total area treated may be unclear because such projects are not always recorded, and landholders may undertake similar activities without subsidisation. In the absence of empirical data, in the state of Victoria, Australia, a reporting assumption has been employed that suggests that wholly privately funded sites match publicly subsidised sites on a hectare for hectare basis (a so-called "x2" assumption).