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Ant community responses to farmland use and revegetation in a fragmented agricultural landscape

  • Authors: Ng, Katherine , Nowrouzi, Somayeh , Staunton, Kyran , Barton, Philip , Driscoll, Don
  • Date: 2021
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Agriculture Ecosystems & Environment Vol. 311, no. (May 2021), p. 8
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  • Description: Recent alarming losses of insects from agricultural landscapes in multiple countries around the world have brought into sharp focus the urgent need to identify ways to manage these landscapes to avoid further biodiversity decline. Identifying the drivers of insect declines, such as land use change, is critical to this effort. We examined ant communities at the interface between remnant vegetation patches and three adjoining farmland types (wheat crop, rested from cropping and restoration plantings) in a fragmented landscape in temperate Australia. We asked: do ant communities and occurrence of individual species differ between remnant patches and farmlands with more intensive farmland use (restoration plantings < rested farmlands < wheat crop)? We recorded 13,283 ants belonging to 102 species from 30 genera. Excluding 21 singletons, 27 species only occurred in remnant patches compared to ten species found only in farmlands. Ant community composition in wheat crop and rested farmlands significantly differed from their adjacent remnant patches and were more homogeneous. In contrast, ant communities from restoration plantings in farmland were not significantly different in composition from those in the adjacent remnant patch. The large, aggressive Australian meat ant (Iridomyrmex purpureus) showed significantly higher occurrence in the remnant patch than all farmland types, and we suggest that the absence of this strongly interacting species from farmlands may have contributed to biotic homogenisation. Our findings show that native vegetation provides crucial habitat resources for many ant species that are not provided by farmlands, and native plantings can, in some cases, ameliorate negative effects of farmland clearing over relatively short time scales (<7 years). Agricultural intensification that involves loss of remnant native vegetation or reduced revegetation will contribute to ongoing losses and changes to ant biodiversity in farming landscapes. However, replanting native vegetation can lead to rapid restoration, signifying a possible simple remedy to insect declines.

Convergence of social strategies in carrion breeding insects

  • Authors: Charabidze, Damien , Trumbo, Stephen , Grzywacz, Andrze , Costa, James , Barton, Philip
  • Date: 2021
  • Type: Text , Journal article , Review
  • Relation: BioScience Vol. 71, no. 10 (2021), p. 1028-1037
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  • Description: Carrion is a highly ephemeral and nutrient rich resource, characterized by extreme biotic and abiotic stressors. We hypothesized that specific constraints of the carrion ecosystem, and especially its nutrient richness, ephemerality, and competition with microbes, have promoted the evolution of social behaviors in necrophagous insects. We show that group living is prevalent among early succession carrion breeding insects, suggesting that this trait has emerged as an adaptation to facilitate survival in the highly competitive environment of fresh carrion. We then highlight how developmental niche construction allows larvae to compete with microbes, efficiently feed on fresh cadavers, and rapidly reach maturity. We observed that larval societies and parental care are two different strategies responding to similar competitive and environmental constraints. We conclude that intra and interspecific competition on carrion are mitigated by social behavior. © 2021 The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. **Please note that there are multiple authors for this article therefore only the name of the first 5 including Federation University Australia affiliate “Philip Barton” is provided in this record**

Ecological processes associated with different animal taxa in urban environments

  • Authors: Evans, Maldwyn , Barton, Philip , Westgate, Martin , Soga, Masashi , Fujita, Go , Miyashita, Tadashi
  • Date: 2021
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Ecosphere Vol. 12, no. 8 (2021), p.
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  • Description: Urbanization is increasing globally with wide-ranging consequences for biodiversity and the ecological processes it performs. Yet knowledge of the range of ecological processes supported by biodiversity in urban environments, and the different taxa that perform these processes is poorly understood. We used a text-analysis approach to identify the research trends and gaps in knowledge in the literature on ecological processes provided by animals in urban environments. We found a divide in urban ecological processes research that grouped studies into those with an explicit link to ecological processes and those that focused on biodiversity and made an implicit link to ecological processes. We also found that the dominant taxa in urban ecological processes research were insects, which has more than twice as many studies as birds or mammals, potentially due to their recognized and explicit link to key processes and services (e.g., pollination, pollution biomonitoring) and disservices (e.g., pests, disease transmission). We found a further split between terrestrial and aquatic studies, with urban aquatic studies also declining in relative prevalence over the last 20 yr. To consolidate and advance research on ecological processes in urban environments, we suggest it will be important to bridge the divide between studies on explicit services and others on more general biodiversity. This might be achieved by placing greater focus on the processes provided by non-insect taxa, and by integrating aquatic and terrestrial perspectives. © 2021 The Authors.

Field succession studies and casework can help to identify forensically useful Diptera

  • Authors: Dawson, Blake , Barton, Philip , Wallman, James
  • Date: 2021
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Journal of Forensic Sciences Vol. 66, no. 6 (2021), p. 2319-2328
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  • Description: Fly development rates, and to a lesser extent succession data, can be used to provide an estimate of a minimum postmortem interval (mPMI). Yet, these data are most useful when a full account of species’ ecology, seasonality, and distribution is known. We conducted succession experiments on human cadavers over different seasons near Sydney, Australia, to document forensically useful information, including the pre-appearance interval for carrion flies. We also compiled a detailed record of flies identified in casework collected in 156 cases distributed across New South Wales, Australia. We then compared the occurrence of fly species from both field and casework datasets to identify any consistencies or gaps to determine how useful species might be for forensic investigations. In the field experiments, we found differences in species diversity and abundance between seasons, as well as yearly variation between two winter seasons. Most fly species we recorded ovipositing showed a 2- or 3-day delay between adult arrival and oviposition in summer, with a longer delay in winter. Species that were previously encountered in casework, such as Calliphora augur (Fabricius, 1775) and Calliphora ochracea Schiner, 1868, were confirmed as forensically useful, with their colonization behavior and seasonal preferences documented here. Although not encountered in casework, we confirmed Hemipyrellia fergusoni Patton, 1925 as a primary colonizer of human cadavers. Our study emphasizes the need to link field and casework data for a complete understanding of all aspects of a carrion fly's ecology to assist forensic investigators in mPMI estimations. © 2021 American Academy of Forensic Sciences

How bioregional history could shape the future of agriculture

  • Authors: Brown, Julian , Barton, Philip , Cunningham, Saul
  • Date: 2021
  • Type: Text , Book chapter
  • Relation: Advances in Ecological Research p. 149-189
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  • Description: Biodiversity conservation and agriculture are becoming intimately intertwined. Wildlife-friendly agriculture is promoted as a way to conserve biodiversity, connect nature reserves, facilitate climate-driven range shifts and enhance ecosystem services to agriculture. Yet some approaches that increase native biodiversity in agricultural landscapes, such as tropical agroforestry, may support a suite of species that is distinct from nearby remnant habitat. Wildlife-friendly farming, therefore, does not necessarily facilitate native species persistence through landscape conversion to agriculture or facilitate the movement of local species among nature reserves. We argue the historical composition of native species in agricultural landscapes can be maintained by enhancing ecological similarity between production land uses and natural ecosystems. Some agricultural systems already support native species from, and share some ecological attributes with, natural grasslands, wetlands and forests. However, we suggest there are benefits to be gained by focusing on the finer details of similarities in structure, floristic composition (e.g. crop species) and disturbance regimes occurring across natural and modified habitat types. A key advancement of this approach is that the composition of agricultural diversity and its spatio-temporal dynamics are selected and managed according to the spatial and temporal habitat requirements of the wildlife species naturally inhabiting the local area. We argue that ensuring ecological similarity between agricultural systems and the ecosystems they replaced or lie between will strengthen the capacity of agricultural landscapes to maintain historical species pools and provide spatial and temporal connectivity between nature reserves and analogous future climatic zones. © 2021 Elsevier Ltd

Is resource change a useful predictor of carrion insect succession on pigs and humans?

  • Authors: Dawson, Blake , Wallman, James , Evans, Maldwyn , Barton, Philip
  • Date: 2021
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Journal of Medical Entomology Vol. , no. (2021), p.
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  • Description: Carrion is a dynamic and nutrient-rich resource that attracts numerous insect species that undergo succession due to the rapid change in the carrion resource. Despite this process being well-understood, few studies have examined resource change as a driver of carrion insect succession, and instead have focused on the effects of time per se, or on coarse, qualitative measures such as decay stage. Here we report on three field succession experiments using pig carcasses and human cadavers encompassing two winters and one summer. We quantified the effects of resource change (measured as total body score, TBS), carrion type, initial carrion mass, ambient temperature, and season on insect species richness and community composition. We found that all variables had an effect on different taxonomic or trophic components of the insect community composition, with the exception of initial carrion mass which had no effect. We found significant positive effects of TBS on beetle species richness and composition, while fly species richness was not significantly affected by TBS, but was by ambient temperature. TBS had a significant positive effect on all trophic groups, while ambient temperature also had a significant positive effect on the necrophages and predator/parasitoids. Our study indicates that resource change, as indicated by TBS, is an important driver of carrion insect species turnover and succession on carrion, and that TBS can provide information about insect ecological patterns on carrion that other temporal measures of change cannot.

Limited understanding of bushfire impacts on Australian invertebrates

  • Authors: Saunders, Manu , Barton, Philip , Bickerstaff, James , Frost, Lindsey , Umbers, Kate
  • Date: 2021
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Insect Conservation and Diversity Vol. 14, no. 3 (2021), p. 285-293
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  • Description: Understanding how increasing risk of frequent and severe fires affects biodiversity and ecosystem function is important for effective conservation and recovery, but large knowledge gaps exist for many taxa in many parts of the world, especially invertebrates. After Australia's 2019–2020 catastrophic bushfire disaster, estimates of biodiversity loss and government priorities for post-fire conservation activities were focused on vertebrates and plants because of lack of knowledge about invertebrates. Our synthesis of published evidence reveals a fragmented and ambiguous body of literature on invertebrate responses to fire in Australian ecosystems, limiting the capacity of evidence to inform effective conservation policy in response to extreme fire events. Peer-reviewed studies are available for only six of the more than 30 invertebrate phyla and 88% were on arthropods, predominantly ants. Nearly all studies (94%) were conducted in terrestrial habitats, with only four studies measuring impacts in freshwater habitats and no studies of impacts on marine invertebrates. The high variation in study designs and treatment categories, as well as the absence of key methodological details in many older observational studies, means that there is substantial opportunity to improve our approach to collating meaningful estimates of general fire effects. To understand the full ecological effects of catastrophic fire events, and design effective policies that support recovery of ecosystems now and in future, it is critical that we improve understanding of how fire regimes affect invertebrates. We list key priorities for research and policy to support invertebrate conservation and ecosystem recovery in the face of increasing fire risk. © 2021 Royal Entomological Society. **Please note that there are multiple authors for this article therefore only the name of the first 5 including Federation University Australia affiliate “Kate Umbers” is provided in this record**

Monitoring the dead as an ecosystem indicator

  • Authors: Newsome, Thomas , Barton, Brandon , Buck, Julia , DeBruyn, Jennifer , Barton, Philip
  • Date: 2021
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Ecology and Evolution Vol. 11, no. 11 (2021), p. 5844-5856
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  • Description: Dead animal biomass (carrion) is present in all terrestrial ecosystems, and its consumption, decomposition, and dispersal can have measurable effects on vertebrates, invertebrates, microbes, parasites, plants, and soil. But despite the number of studies examining the influence of carrion on food webs, there has been no attempt to identify how general ecological processes around carrion might be used as an ecosystem indicator. We suggest that knowledge of scavenging and decomposition rates, scavenger diversity, abundance, and behavior around carrion, along with assessments of vegetation, soil, microbe, and parasite presence, can be used individually or in combination to understand food web dynamics. Monitoring carrion could also assist comparisons of ecosystem processes among terrestrial landscapes and biomes. Although there is outstanding research needed to fully integrate carrion ecology and monitoring into ecosystem management, we see great potential in using carrion as an ecosystem indicator of an intact and functional food web. © 2021 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. **Please note that there are multiple authors for this article therefore only the name of the first 5 including Federation University Australia affiliate “Philip Barton" is provided in this record**

Outfoxing the fox : effect of prey odor on fox behavior in a pastoral landscape

  • Authors: Andrewartha, Tim , Evans, Maldwyn , Batson, William , Manning, Adrian , Barton, Philip
  • Date: 2021
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Conservation Science and Practice Vol. 3, no. 12 (2021), p.
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  • Description: Invasive mammalian predators have had a devastating effect on native species globally. The European red fox (Vulpes vulpes) is one such species where it has been introduced in Australia. A novel but unexplored tactic to reduce the impact of mammalian predators is the use of unrewarded prey odors to undermine the effectiveness of olfactory hunting behavior. To test the viability of unrewarded prey odors in an applied setting we investigated how foxes responded to the odors of three different prey species. We used the odors of two locally extinct native Australian marsupials; the eastern quoll (a smaller carnivore) and eastern bettong (a fungivore), and the European rabbit, an introduced herbivore. Conducting our research over a period of 3 weeks in a pastoral environment in South-eastern Australia, we used video observations of foxes' behaviors, as they encountered the different odors. We found a reduction in the number of fox visits to bettong odors in the third week. In contrast, we observed a sustained number of visits to rabbit odors. Foxes also spent more time investigating rabbit odors and displayed longer durations of vigilance behavior at quoll odors. Our results support the hypothesis that the exposure of wild foxes to unrewarded odors of novel prey species can reduce their interest in these odors, which might translate to a reduction in predation pressure. Our results also suggest, however, that olfactory pre-exposure may not be as effective at reducing fox interest in a competitor species' odor. © 2021 The Authors. Conservation Science and Practice published by Wiley Periodicals LLC. on behalf of Society for Conservation Biology

Submission of original research paper for agriculture, ecosystems & environment ant community responses to farmland use and revegetation in a fragmented agricultural landscape

  • Authors: Ng, Katherine , Nowrouzi, Somayeh , Staunton, Kyran , Barton, Philip , Driscoll, Don
  • Date: 2021
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment Vol. 311, no. (2021), p.
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  • Description: Recent alarming losses of insects from agricultural landscapes in multiple countries around the world have brought into sharp focus the urgent need to identify ways to manage these landscapes to avoid further biodiversity decline. Identifying the drivers of insect declines, such as land use change, is critical to this effort. We examined ant communities at the interface between remnant vegetation patches and three adjoining farmland types (wheat crop, rested from cropping and restoration plantings) in a fragmented landscape in temperate Australia. We asked: do ant communities and occurrence of individual species differ between remnant patches and farmlands with more intensive farmland use (restoration plantings < rested farmlands < wheat crop)? We recorded 13,283 ants belonging to 102 species from 30 genera. Excluding 21 singletons, 27 species only occurred in remnant patches compared to ten species found only in farmlands. Ant community composition in wheat crop and rested farmlands significantly differed from their adjacent remnant patches and were more homogeneous. In contrast, ant communities from restoration plantings in farmland were not significantly different in composition from those in the adjacent remnant patch. The large, aggressive Australian meat ant (Iridomyrmex purpureus) showed significantly higher occurrence in the remnant patch than all farmland types, and we suggest that the absence of this strongly interacting species from farmlands may have contributed to biotic homogenisation. Our findings show that native vegetation provides crucial habitat resources for many ant species that are not provided by farmlands, and native plantings can, in some cases, ameliorate negative effects of farmland clearing over relatively short time scales (<7 years). Agricultural intensification that involves loss of remnant native vegetation or reduced revegetation will contribute to ongoing losses and changes to ant biodiversity in farming landscapes. However, replanting native vegetation can lead to rapid restoration, signifying a possible simple remedy to insect declines. © 2021 Elsevier B.V.

Temperature dynamics in different body regions of decomposing vertebrate remains

  • Authors: Barton, Philip , Dawson, Blake , Barton, Andrew , Joshua, Sergio , Wallman, James
  • Date: 2021
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Forensic Science International Vol. 325, no. (2021), p.
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  • Description: The decomposition of vertebrates is controlled largely by external temperature, yet internal temperatures can also play an important role but are generally poorly documented. In this study, we compared continuous hourly temperature recordings from the mouth, under the head, right chest and right abdomen, and in the rectum of one refrigerated human and one fresh pig cadaver during 29 days of decomposition. Each cadaver differed in its internal starting temperature, thus providing two contrasting case studies for examining temperature dynamics among body regions. We used time-series analysis methods common to hydrology to reveal key differences in internal temperature dynamics. Within both cadavers, the chest region experienced the highest average temperatures, and the mouth experienced the highest maximum hourly temperature. Temperatures exceeded 30 °C inside the pig for between 40% (rectum) and 75% (chest) of the duration of the study, but for only 20% (rectum) and 35% (chest) of the time in the human. Our study provides evidence of the different thermal trajectories occurring in different body regions, and some similarities between two cadavers despite their different starting thermal conditions. These results improve our understanding of why decomposition occurs at different rates within the same cadaver, and that the location of blowfly larvae collections should be noted to improve estimates of the post-mortem interval. © 2021 Elsevier B.V.

Contrasting insect activity and decomposition of pigs and humans in an Australian environment : a preliminary study

  • Authors: Dawson, Blake , Barton, Philip , Wallman, James
  • Date: 2020
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Forensic Science International Vol. 316, no. (2020), p.
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  • Description: Non-human vertebrate animals, primarily domestic pigs, have been widely used in forensic science research as analogues for humans due to ethical and logistical constraints. Yet the suitability of pigs to mimic human decomposition and entomological patterns remains largely untested, and explicit comparative research in this area is lacking. We compared the decomposition rates and insect communities found at pig and human remains during summer and winter at the Australian Facility for Taphonomic Experimental Research (AFTER). Pigs decomposed faster than humans, with pigs entering active decay earlier in both summer and winter, and humans undergoing desiccation rather than skeletonisation. There was also a delay in the colonisation of humans by both flies and beetles. Species richness of these necrophagous taxa was between two and five times higher during the first two weeks of decomposition on pigs compared to humans during both summer and winter. Insect species composition was also significantly different between pigs and humans in each season. We interpret our findings to mean that the difference between humans and pigs, such as their mass, diet, medical history, or their microbiomes, might be causing different decomposition processes and altered timing or production of chemical cues for insect colonisation. Although preliminary, our results suggest that pigs might not be accurate substitutes for humans in particular fields of taphonomy and forensic entomology. Our findings also have broader implications for the reliability of forensic studies using pigs as models for humans, and highlight the need to recognise intrinsic differences between animal models and humans. © 2020 Elsevier B.V.
  • Description: This work was supported in part by the Australian Research Council ( LE150100015 ), as well as by a SMAH Small Project Grant ( University of Wollongong ).

Quantifying shifts in topic popularity over 44 years of austral ecology

  • Authors: Westgate, Martin , Barton, Philip , Lindenmayer, David , Andrew, Nigel
  • Date: 2020
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Austral Ecology Vol. 45, no. 6 (2020), p. 663-671
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  • Description: The Ecological Society of Australia was founded in 1959, and the society’s journal was first published in 1976. To examine how research published in the society’s journal has changed over this time, we used text mining to quantify themes and trends in the body of work published by the Australian Journal of Ecology and Austral Ecology from 1976 to 2019. We used topic models to identify 30 ‘topics’ within 2778 full-text articles in 246 issues of the journal, followed by mixed modelling to identify topics with above-average or below-average popularity in terms of the number of publications or citations that they contain. We found high inter-decadal turnover in research topics, with an early emphasis on highly specific ecosystems or processes giving way to a modern emphasis on community, spatial and fire ecology, invasive species and statistical modelling. Despite an early focus on Australian research, papers discussing South American ecosystems are now among the fastest-growing and most frequently cited topics in the journal. Topics that were growing fastest in publication rates were not always the same as those with high citation rates. Our results provide a systematic breakdown of the topics that Austral Ecology authors and editors have chosen to research, publish and cite through time, providing a valuable window into the historical and emerging foci of the journal. © 2020 Ecological Society of Australia

Soil chemical markers distinguishing human and pig decomposition islands : a preliminary study

  • Authors: Barton, Philip , Reboldi, Anna , Dawson, Blake , Ueland, Maiken , Strong, Craig , Wallman, James
  • Date: 2020
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Forensic Science, Medicine, and Pathology Vol. 16, no. 4 (2020), p. 605-612
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  • Description: The decomposition of vertebrate cadavers on the soil surface produces nutrient-rich fluids that enter the soil profile, leaving clear evidence of the presence of a cadaver decomposition island. Few studies, however, have described soil physicochemistry under human cadavers, or compared the soil between human and non-human animal models. In this study, we sampled soil to 5 cm depth at distances of 0 cm and 30 cm from cadavers, as well as from control sites 90 cm distant, from five human and three pig cadavers at the Australian Facility for Taphonomic Experimental Research (AFTER). We found that soil moisture, electrical conductivity, nitrate, ammonium, and total phosphorus were higher in soil directly under cadavers (0 cm), with very limited lateral spread beyond 30 cm. These patterns lasted up to 700 days, indicating that key soil nutrients might be useful markers of the location of the decomposition island for up to 2 years. Soil phosphorus was always higher under pigs than humans, suggesting a possible difference in the decomposition and soil processes under these two cadaver types. Our preliminary study highlights the need for further experimental and replicated research to quantify variability in soil properties, and to identify when non-human animals are suitable analogues. © 2020, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.

Avian functional responses to landscape recovery

  • Authors: Ikin, Karen , Barton, Philip , Blanchard, Wade , Crane, Mason , Stein, John , Lindenmayer, David
  • Date: 2019
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Vol. 286, no. 1901 (2019), p.
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  • Description: Restoring native vegetation in agricultural landscapes can reverse biodiversity declines via species gains. Depending on whether the traits of colonizers are complementary or redundant to the assemblage, species gains can increase the efficiency or stability of ecological functions, yet detecting these processes is not straightforward.We propose a new conceptual model to identify potential changes to complementarity and redundancy in response to landscape change via relative changes in taxonomic and functional richness.We applied our model to a 14-year study of birds across an extensive agricultural region. We found compelling evidence that high levels of landscape-scale tree cover and patch-scale restoration were significant determinants of functional change in the overall bird assemblage. This was true for every one of the six traits investigated individually, indicating increased trait-specific functional complementarity and redundancy in the assemblage. Applying our conceptual model to species diversity data provided new insights into how the return of vertebrates to restored landscapes may affect ecological function. © 2019 The Author(s).

Beetle ecological indicators – A comparison of cost vs reward to understand functional changes in response to restoration actions

  • Authors: Evans, Maldwyn , Cunningham, Saul , Gibb, Heloise , Manning, Adrian , Barton, Philip
  • Date: 2019
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Ecological Indicators Vol. 104, no. (2019), p. 209-218
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  • Description: Ecosystem restoration can play a vital role in conserving biodiversity, but its effectiveness can be difficult to assess for hyperdiverse biota such as insects. Species traits of insects can be used to understand their functional responses to restoration, but their use often requires considerable effort, and few studies have examined what additional insight can be gained from this approach. We used a spatially and temporally controlled restoration experiment to examine beetle species, grouped by flight ability, family membership and feeding guild, as indicators of ecosystem functional change. We tested for the effects of reduced vertebrate grazing on beetle assemblages sampled from two different microhabitats (next to log and in open ground)one year prior and two years after a vertebrate grazing treatment was applied. We compared the responses of the different beetle functional groupings, and then related these to the effort involved in employing these indicators. We found that beetle species traits gave several functional insights into their responses to reduced grazing, including responses to changes in vegetation structure and biomass. Species richness indicators and abundance indicators of beetle functional groups showed similar responses in many cases, whereas biomass indicators gave additional insights related to the extra biomass of vegetation and detritus resulting from the reduction in grazing. We found that most results were revealed by using family groups as indicators for functional change. This is because the traits that often define beetle families, such as size, flight ability and feeding guilds each have distinctive functional roles, allowing a link from family to function, and supporting the idea that phylogeny is often a useful shortcut to species ecology. We conclude that in our study system, the least-cost approach to identifying functional responses of beetles to reduced vertebrate grazing, and possibly other restoration actions, is to use abundance indicators of the most common family groups. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd

Carrion decomposition

Contrasting effects of mosaic structure on alpha and beta diversity of bird assemblages in a human-modified landscape

  • Authors: Neilan, Wendy , Barton, Philip , McAlpine, Clive , Wood, Jeffrey , Lindenmayer, David
  • Date: 2019
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Ecography Vol. 42, no. 1 (2019), p. 173-186
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  • Description: Habitat loss and fragmentation are key processes causing biodiversity loss in human-modified landscapes. Knowledge of these processes has largely been derived from measuring biodiversity at the scale of ‘within-habitat’ fragments with the surrounding landscape considered as matrix. Yet, the loss of variation in species assemblages ‘among’ habitat fragments (landscape-scale) may be as important a driver of biodiversity loss as the loss of diversity ‘within’ habitat fragments (local-scale). We tested the hypothesis that heterogeneity in vegetation cover is important for maintaining alpha and beta diversity in human-modified landscapes. We surveyed bird assemblages in eighty 300-m-long transects nested within twenty 1-km 2 vegetation ‘mosaics’, with mosaics assigned to four categories defined by the cover extent and configuration of native eucalypt forest and exotic pine plantation. We examined bird assemblages at two spatial scales: 1) within and among transects, and 2) within and among mosaics. Alpha diversity was the mean species diversity within-transects or within-mosaics and beta diversity quantified the effective number of compositionally distinct transects or mosaics. We found that within-transect alpha diversity was highest in vegetation mosaics defined by continuous eucalypt forest, lowest in mosaics of continuous pine plantation, and at intermediate levels in mosaics containing eucalypt patches in a pine matrix. We found that eucalypt mosaics had lower beta diversity than other mosaic types when ignoring relative abundances, but had similar or higher beta diversity when weighting with species abundances. Mosaics containing both pine and eucalypt forest differed in their bird compositional variation among transects, despite sharing a similar suite of species. This configuration effect at the mosaic scale reflected differences in vegetation composition among transects. Maintaining heterogeneity in vegetation cover could help to maintain variation among bird assemblages across landscapes, thus partially offsetting local-scale diversity losses due to fragmentation. Critical to this is the retention of remnant native vegetation. © 2018 The Authors

Dynamic soil nutrient and moisture changes under decomposing vertebrate carcasses

  • Authors: Quaggiotto, Maria , Evans, Maldwyn , Higgins, Andrew , Strong, Craig , Barton, Philip
  • Date: 2019
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Biogeochemistry Vol. 146, no. 1 (2019), p. 71-82
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  • Description: The decomposition of animal carcasses contributes to nutrient recycling in ecosystems worldwide, including by delivering nutrients to soil. Although several studies have characterised changes in soil chemistry occurring under carcasses, many ecological studies have occurred over extended post-mortem intervals and fine-scale temporal changes in physicochemical conditions are poorly understood. We examined changes in a suite of soil physicochemical properties occurring under decomposing rabbit carcasses during summer in a grassland ecosystem. We found that carcasses lost over 90% of their starting mass and reached dry decay and skeletonization after 20 days of decomposition. Carcass temperatures were up to 15 °C higher than ambient temperatures during the active decay stage (days 3 and 5) of decomposition. Soil moisture also increased by day 4, and this was matched with a simultaneous increase in total nitrogen and ammonium, as well increases in pH and electrical conductivity. Whereas these measures remained relatively stable as decay progressed, we found total phosphorus and phosphate continued to increase to day 20. The contrasting dynamics of N and P reflect the initial nutrient and fluid input during the rapid decay of soft tissues and intense activity of fly larvae, and the subsequent dry decay and exposure of skeletal components. Our study provides new information about the fine-scale timing of nutrient inputs and moisture and temperature changes occurring at the carcass/soil interface. © 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Effects of digging by a native and introduced ecosystem engineer on soil physical and chemical properties in temperate grassy woodland

  • Authors: Ross, Catherine , Munro, Nicola , Barton, Philip , Evans, Maldwyn , Gillen, John
  • Date: 2019
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: PeerJ Vol. 2019, no. 8 (2019), p.
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  • Description: Temperate grasslands and woodlands are the focus of extensive restoration efforts worldwide. Reintroduction of locally extinct soil-foraging and burrowing animals has been suggested as a means to restore soil function in these ecosystems. Yet little is known about the physical and chemical effects of digging on soil over time and how these effects differ between species of digging animal, vegetation types or ecosystems. We compared foraging pits of a native reintroduced marsupial, the eastern bettong (Bettongia gaimardi) and that of the exotic European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus). We simulated pits of these animals and measured pit dimensions and soil chemical properties over a period of 2 years. We showed that bettong and rabbit pits differed in their morphology and longevity, and that pits had a strong moderating effect on soil surface temperatures. Over 75% of the simulated pits were still visible after 2 years, and bettong pits infilled faster than rabbit pits. Bettong pits reduced diurnal temperature range by up to 25 ° C compared to the soil surface. We did not find any effects of digging on soil chemistry that were consistent across vegetation types, between bettong and rabbit pits, and with time since digging, which is contrary to studies conducted in arid biomes. Our findings show that animal foraging pits in temperate ecosystems cause physical alteration of the soil surface and microclimatic conditions rather than nutrient changes often observed in arid areas. © 2019 Ross et al. **Please note that there are multiple authors for this article therefore only the name of the first 5 including Federation University Australia affiliate “Philip Barton” is provided in this record**