206 results match your criteria: "Arthur Rylah Institute[Affiliation]"
J Anim Ecol
November 2021
School of BioSciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Vic., Australia.
Directional or stabilising selection should drive the expression of a dominant movement phenotype within a population. Widespread persistence of multiple movement phenotypes within wild populations, however, suggests that individuals that move (movers) and those that do not (residents) can have commensurate performance. The costs and benefits of mover and resident phenotypes remain poorly understood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMov Ecol
June 2021
Centre for Integrative Ecology, School of Life and Environmental Science, Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria, Australia.
Background: In-flight conditions are hypothesized to influence the timing and success of long-distance migration. Wind assistance and thermal uplift are thought to reduce the energetic costs of flight, humidity, air pressure and temperature may affect the migrants' water balance, and clouds may impede navigation. Recent advances in animal-borne long-distance tracking enable evaluating the importance of these factors in determining animals' flight altitude.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Environ Res Public Health
May 2021
School of Animal and Veterinary Sciences, Faculty of Science, Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, NSW 2650, Australia.
That dogs can live and breed as free-living animals contributes to public health risks including zoonotic transmission, dog bites, and compromising people's sense of safety in public spaces. In Australia, free-living dog populations are comprised of domestic dogs, dingoes, and dog-dingo hybrids, and are described using various terms (for example, stray or community), depending on social or geographic context. Urban expansion and regional migration mean that risks associated with contact between humans and free-living dogs are increasing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTransbound Emerg Dis
July 2022
Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Microbiology, School of Life Sciences, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria, Australia.
Infection with Neospora caninum parasites is a leading cause of reproduction losses in cattle worldwide. In Australia, this loss is estimated to total AU$110 million every year. However, despite this considerable economic impact, the transmission cycle and the host(s) responsible for the sylvatic transmission of the parasite remain to be defined.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBiol Conserv
November 2021
Red Sea Research Center and Computational Bioscience Research Center, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, 23955 Thuwal, Saudi Arabia.
The global lockdown to mitigate COVID-19 pandemic health risks has altered human interactions with nature. Here, we report immediate impacts of changes in human activities on wildlife and environmental threats during the early lockdown months of 2020, based on 877 qualitative reports and 332 quantitative assessments from 89 different studies. Hundreds of reports of unusual species observations from around the world suggest that animals quickly responded to the reductions in human presence.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFConservation research is dominated by vertebrate examples but the shorter generation times and high local population sizes of invertebrates may lead to very different management strategies, particularly for species with low movement rates. Here we investigate the genetic structure of an endangered flightless grasshopper, , which was used in classical evolutionary studies in the 1960s. It had a wide distribution across New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria in pre-European times but has now become threatened because of land clearing for agriculture and other activities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Wildl Dis
July 2021
Institute of Land, Water and Society, Charles Sturt University, Albury-Wodonga Campus, PO Box 789, Albury, New South Wales 2640, Australia.
Chytridiomycosis, caused by the chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), is a leading cause of global amphibian declines. Severe infections with Bd can lead to cardiac arrest, and mass deaths during epidemics have been reported. Temperature, pH, salinity, and moisture are important determinants of the survival, growth, reproduction, and pathogenicity of Bd, as well as its effect on amphibian populations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThrough using different sources, population reintroductions can create genetically diverse populations at low risk of harmful inbreeding and well equipped for adaptation to future environments. Genetic variation from one source can mask locally nonoptimal alleles from another, thereby enhancing adaptive potential and population persistence. We assessed the outcomes in survival, growth and reproduction of using two differentiated sources (genetically diverse Yarra and moderately diverse Dartmouth) for translocations and stocking to reintroduce the endangered Australian freshwater Macquarie perch into the Ovens River.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPLoS One
August 2021
School of BioSciences, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Traffic disturbances (i.e. pollution, light, noise, and vibrations) often extend into the area surrounding a road creating a 'road-effect zone'.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTransbound Emerg Dis
May 2022
Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research, Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, Heidelberg, VIC, Australia.
Amongst newly developed approaches to analyse molecular data, phylodynamic models are receiving much attention because of their potential to reveal changes to viral populations over short periods. This knowledge can be very important for understanding disease impacts. However, their accuracy needs to be fully understood, especially in relation to wildlife disease epidemiology, where sampling and prior knowledge may be limited.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEcol Lett
May 2021
School of Natural Sciences, University of Tasmania, Private Bag 55, Hobart, TAS, 7001, Australia.
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.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEcology
May 2021
School of BioSciences, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, 3010, Australia.
Trait-based invasiveness studies typically categorize exotic species as invasive or noninvasive, implicitly assuming species form two homogenous groups. However, species can become invasive in different ways (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHeredity (Edinb)
May 2021
School of Biological Sciences, Clayton Campus, Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia.
Conservation management can be aided by knowledge of genetic diversity and evolutionary history, so that ecological and evolutionary processes can be preserved. The Button Wrinklewort daisy (Rutidosis leptorrhynchoides) was a common component of grassy ecosystems in south-eastern Australia. It is now endangered due to extensive habitat loss and the impacts of livestock grazing, and is currently restricted to a few small populations in two regions >500 km apart, one in Victoria, the other in the Australian Capital Territory and nearby New South Wales (ACT/NSW).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnviron Manage
April 2021
Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research, Heidelberg, 3084, VIC, Australia.
Flow regulation impacts on riparian vegetation composition, often increasing the prevalence of exotic and terrestrial plant species. Environmental flows may benefit native riparian vegetation via the promotion of plant recruitment from riparian soil seedbanks, but this is dependent on an intact native seedbank. Thus, we assessed the composition of the soil seedbank of different riverine geomorphic features to determine its potential response to environmental flows.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Fish Biol
July 2021
Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research, Heidelberg, Victoria, Australia.
Anthropogenic alterations to river flow regimes threaten freshwater biodiversity globally, with potentially disproportionate impacts on species that rely on flow cues to trigger critical life history processes, such as migration for diadromous fishes. This study investigates the influence of river discharge on the abundance of juvenile fish moving into rivers by four temperate catadromous or amphidromous species (common galaxias Galaxias maculatus, spotted galaxias Galaxias truttaceus, climbing galaxias Galaxias brevipinnis and the threatened Australian grayling Prototroctes maraena). Fyke netting or fishway trapping was used to catch juvenile fish moving from estuaries into freshwater in five coastal waterways in south-eastern Australia during the spring migratory period.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFZootaxa
November 2020
School of BioSciences, University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia Ichthyology, Sciences Department, Museums Victoria, Victoria 3001, Australia Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research, Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, 123 Brown Street, Heidelberg, Victoria 3084, Australia. Aquatic Biodiversity and Conservation Program, Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research, Vic 3084, Australia..
The systematics of the genus Hannia Vari 1978, endemic to freshwater habitats of remote north-western Australia, is revised in light of recent collections in the region and a molecular study of the group that identified an undescribed candidate species. A new freshwater fish species (Hannia wintoni sp. nov) is described based on analysis of multiple nuclear genetic markers (53 allozyme loci), mitochondrial DNA sequence data (601 bp cytochrome b) and morphology (examination of a suite of 66 morphometric and meristic characters).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Fish Biol
March 2021
School of Biological Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
Inadequately designed culverts can be physical barriers to fish passage if they increase the velocity of water flow in the environment, alter natural turbulence patterns or fail to provide adequate water depth. They may also act as behavioural barriers to fish passage if they affect the willingness of fish species to enter or pass through the structure due to altered ambient light conditions. To understand how reduced light intensity might affect fish behaviour in culverts, the authors performed a behavioural choice experiment quantifying the amount of time individual fish spent in dark and illuminated areas of a controlled experimental channel.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGlob Chang Biol
December 2020
Fenner School of Environment and Society, The Australian National University, Acton, ACT, Australia.
Measuring the status and trends of biodiversity is critical for making informed decisions about the conservation, management or restoration of species, habitats and ecosystems. Defining the reference state against which status and change are measured is essential. Typically, reference states describe historical conditions, yet historical conditions are challenging to quantify, may be difficult to falsify, and may no longer be an attainable target in a contemporary ecosystem.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFScience
October 2020
Departamento de Ecologia e Conservação, Universidade Federal de Lavras, CEP 37200-900, Lavras, MG, Brazil.
Conservation initiatives overwhelmingly focus on terrestrial biodiversity, and little is known about the freshwater cobenefits of terrestrial conservation actions. We sampled more than 1500 terrestrial and freshwater species in the Amazon and simulated conservation for species from both realms. Prioritizations based on terrestrial species yielded on average just 22% of the freshwater benefits achieved through freshwater-focused conservation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGlob Chang Biol
December 2020
Centre for Applied Water Science, University of Canberra, Bruce, ACT, Australia.
In the world's rivers, alteration of flow is a major driver of biodiversity decline. Global warming is now affecting the thermal and hydrological regimes of rivers, compounding the threat and complicating conservation planning. To inform management under a non-stationary climate, we must improve our understanding of how flow and thermal regimes interact to affect the population dynamics of riverine biota.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMol Ecol
July 2021
School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia.
Environmental DNA (eDNA) sampling can provide accurate, cost-effective, landscape-level data on species distributions. Previous studies have compared the sensitivity of eDNA sampling to traditional sampling methods for single species, but similar comparative studies on multispecies eDNA metabarcoding are rare. Using hierarchical site occupancy detection models, we examined whether key choices associated with eDNA metabarcoding (primer selection, low-abundance read filtering and the number of positive water samples used to classify a species as present at a site) affect the sensitivity of metabarcoding, relative to backpack electrofishing for fish in freshwater streams.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHabitat fragmentation imperils the persistence of many functionally important species, with climate change a new threat to local persistence due to climate niche mismatching. Predicting the evolutionary trajectory of species essential to ecosystem function under future climates is challenging but necessary for prioritizing conservation investments. We use a combination of population genetics and niche suitability models to assess the trajectory of a functionally important, but highly fragmented, plant species from south-eastern Australia (, Proteaceae).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Total Environ
January 2021
Applied Aquatic Ecology, Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research, Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, 123 Brown Street, Heidelberg, Victoria 3084, Australia.
Recognition that many species share key life-history strategies has enabled predictions of responses to habitat degradation or rehabilitation by these species groups. While such responses have been well documented for freshwater fish that exhibit 'periodic' and 'opportunistic' life-history strategies, this is rare for 'equilibrium' life-history, due largely to their longevity and by comparison, more regular and stable levels of recruitment. Unfortunately, this limits the confidence in using life-history strategies to refine water management interventions to rectify the negative impacts of river regulation for these species.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnviron Toxicol Chem
March 2021
Environment Protection Authority Victoria, Applied Sciences Division, Macleod, Victoria, Australia.
The present study examined the occurrence and concentration of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) measured in game ducks (13 compounds), water, sediment, and soils (33 compounds) in waterways in Victoria, Australia. The study aimed to identify potential ecological and human health risks from measured PFAS concentrations. Four species of duck and samples of water, sediment, and soil were collected from 19 wetlands, which were chosen based on their popularity as hunting locations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFViruses
July 2020
Department of Physiology, Molecular Virology Laboratory, Anatomy and Microbiology, School of Life Sciences, La Trobe University, Melbourne 3086, Australia.
Since deer were introduced into Australia in the mid-1800s, their wild populations have increased in size and distribution, posing a potential risk to the livestock industry, through their role in pathogen transmission cycles. In comparison to livestock, there are limited data on viral infections in all wildlife, including deer. The aim of this study was to assess blood samples from wild Australian deer for serological evidence of exposure to relevant viral livestock diseases.
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