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| | Welcome
We are extremely proud to advise that two of our scientists have been awarded Public Service Medals in this year’s Queen’s Birthday Honours List: Lindy Lumsden and Peter Menkhorst (pictured left). Lindy and Peter have been with the department for many years, and it is fantastic that their dedication to the conservation of native flora and fauna (not just within Victoria but right across Australia) has been recognised in this way. Lindy is well known for her research on microbats and threatened species such as the Leadbeater’s Possum, while Peter has been heavily involved in koala management and was key to the development of the Victorian Biodiversity Atlas. Huge congratulations to both!
Our projects featured in this issue include a fire planning tool to help DELWP include ecological considerations in fuel reduction burns, a state-wide assessment of how fish friendly our stream gauging stations are, and how volunteers are helping with the conservation of a threatened freshwater crayfish and vegetation community. We hope you find these interesting.
Regards
Dr Kim Lowe
Research Director
Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research
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| | FAME - a fire planning tool for ecologcial values
ARI and the University of Melbourne have created an online analysis tool for DELWP that considers the impacts of planned fire on biodiversity. FAME enables fire planners to evaluate the impacts of alternative fire regimes on species and vegetation, to ultimately support explicit consideration of ecological objectives in fire management.
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| | Are stream gauging stations fish friendly?
Stream gauging stations measure flows and water quality and provide information for a variety of purposes including flood warnings. However, the associated weirs can present a barrier to fish movement. ARI is leading a program to assess over 800 stations around Victoria with options for upgrades including fishway installation.
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| | Looking for Dandenong Burrowing Crayfish
Volunteers are contributing to the conservation of the endangered Cool Temperate Rainforest, which is habitat for the threatened Dandenong Burrowing Crayfish. Crayfish surveys and weed control are key activities being conducted during this citizen science collaboration between community groups and state agencies.
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| | PhD Research – Matt Rees (University of Melbourne)
ARI supervisor: Alan Robley
What really happens when you control foxes?
Controlling foxes reduces their predation on threatened native mammals but can have undesirable outcomes. Feral cats may thrive with less competition and fear of foxes. Limiting predation on wallabies and kangaroos could lead to overgrazing, thereby reducing habitat structure that other native species use to avoid predation. Quantifying the strength of these relationships is important to ensure there is a net benefit of fox control to species of concern, but can be difficult due to their subtle and context-specific nature.
Matt (pictured left at a study site) aims to increase understanding of how faunal communities respond to fox control and provide guidance on monitoring such fine-scale interactions. He is surveying fox control programs in the Otway Ranges and Glenelg region of Victoria primarily through camera-trapping, spatially explicit capture-recapture methods and multi-species occupancy models. In particular, Matt is interested in how variation in the behaviour of individual predators and the patchy, dynamic distributions of rare species (e.g. Long-nosed Potoroos and Southern Brown Bandicoots) impacts monitoring precision and data interpretation. This research is providing key information on the drivers of threatened species and invasive predator populations, as well as helping to design more effective invasive predator management and monitoring programs.
Matt’s study is being supervised Bronwyn Hradsky, Brendan Wintle (University of Melbourne) and Alan Robley (ARI), and was originally motivated by uncertainty that was identified in his previous work on structured decision-making of invasive animal management strategies in the Lake Eyre Basin.
mrees2@student.unimelb.edu.au alan.robley@delwp.vic.gov.au
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| | Recent video (link to YouTube) and media releases
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| | Recent journal articles (link to abstract) include:
Dorrough, J., Sinclair, S.J. and Oliver, I. (2019) Expert predictions of changes in vegetation condition reveal perceived risks in biodiversity offsetting. PLOS ONE 14(5): e0216703
Gwinn, D.C., Todd, C.R., Brown, P., Hunt, T.L., Butler, G., Kitchingman, A., Koehn, J.D., and Ingram, B. (2019) Assessing a threatened fish species under budgetary constraints: evaluating the use of existing monitoring data. North American Journal of Fisheries Management 39(2): 315-327
Hauser, C.E., Southwell, D., Lahoz-Monfort, J.J., Rumpff, L., Benshemesh, J., Burnard, T., van Hespen, R., Wright, J., Wintle, B. and Bode, M. (2019) Adaptive management informs conservation and monitoring of Australia’s threatened malleefowl. Biological Conservation 233: 31-40
Hradsky, B.A., Kelly, L.T., Robley, A. and Wintle, B.A. (2019) FoxNet: An individual‐based model framework to support management of an invasive predator, the red fox. Journal of Applied Ecology 56(6): 1460-1470
Lieschke, J. A. (2019) Angling pressure impedes a three-year telemetry study on mulloway (Argyrosomus japonicas) in a western Victorian estuary, southern Australia. Cogent Environmental Science (online early)
Lyon, J.P., Bird, T.J., Kearns, J., Nicol, S., Tonkin, Z., Todd, C.R., O'Mahony, J., Hackett, G., Raymond, S., Lieschke, J., Kitchingman, A. and Bradshaw, C.J.A. (2019) Increased population size of fish in a lowland river following restoration of structural habitat. Ecological Applications 29(4): e01882
Moxham, C., Stajsic, V., Kenny, S.A., Bennetts, K., Sutter, G., Sluiter, I. and Cameron, D. (2019) Pluchea rubelliflora and Pterocaulon sphacelatum (Asteraceae): new to Victoria’s semi-arid floodplains. Muelleria 37: 119-126
O'Connor, J., Pickworth, A., Fanson, B. and Lovric, D. (2019) Assessment of a vertical slot fishway in south‐eastern Australia designed to pass numerous species and size classes of fish. Ecological Management and Restoration 20(2): 151-155
Scroggie, M.P., Preece, K., Nicholson, E., McCarthy, M., Parris, K.M. and Heard, G.W. (2019) Optimizing habitat management for amphibians: from simple models to complex decisions. Biological Conservation 236: 60-69
Senior, A.F., Atkins, Z.S., Clemann, N., Gardner, M.G., Schroder, M., While, G.M., Wong, B.B.M. and Chapple, D.G. (2019) Variation in thermal biology of three closely related lizard species along an elevation gradient. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 127(2): 278–291
Shelley, J.J., Dempster, T., Le Feuvre, M.C., Unmack, P.J., Laffan, S.W. and Swearer, S.E. (2019) A revision of the bioregionalisation of freshwater fish communities in the Australian Monsoonal Tropics. Ecology and Evolution 9(8): 4568-4588
Tonkin, Z., Stuart, I., Kitchingman, A., Thiem, J.D., Zampatti, B., Hackett, G., Koster, W., Koehn, J., Morrongiello, J., Mallen-Cooper, M. and Lyon, J. (2019) Hydrology and water temperature influence recruitment dynamics of the threatened silver perch Bidyanus bidyanus in a regulated lowland river. Marine and Freshwater Research (online early)
Yen, J.D., Tonkin, Z., Lyon, J., Koster, W., Kitchingman, A., Stamation, K. and Vesk, P. (2019) Integrating multiple data types to connect ecological theory and data among levels. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 7:95
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| | ARI Seminar Series
Recent presentations in our 2019 Seminar Series have covered aspects of reproduction in plants and animals, and fire regime impacts on banksias and eucalypts. More seminars will be added as we continue to develop our schedule. If you can’t make it to Heidelberg, register for the webinar to listen and view slides online.
To receive ARI seminar series email alerts, including webinar (live online viewing) details and follow-up summaries, email us at research.ari@delwp.vic.gov.au
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| © The State of Victoria Department of Environment, Land, Water & Planning 2019
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