List of Titles

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

- Ng, Katherine, Nowrouzi, Somayeh, Staunton, Kyran, Barton, Philip, Driscoll, Don

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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Reviewed:
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.

Broad-scale patterns in plant diversity vary between land uses in a variegated temperate Australian agricultural landscape

- Schultz, Nick, Reid, Nick, Lodge, Greg, Hunter, John

Authors: Schultz, Nick , Reid, Nick , Lodge, Greg , Hunter, John
Date: 2014
Type: Text , Journal article
Relation: Austral Ecology Vol. 39, no. 7 (2014), p. 855-863
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Description: Plant diversity is threatened in many agricultural landscapes. Our understanding of patterns of plant diversity in these landscapes is mainly based on small-scale (<1000 m2) observations of species richness. However, such observations are insufficient for detecting the spatial heterogeneity of vegetation composition. In a case-study farm on the North-West Slopes of New South Wales, Australia, we observed species richness at four scales (quadrat, patch, land use and landscape) across five land uses (grazed and ungrazed woodlands, native pastures, roadsides and crops). We applied two landscape ecological models to assess the contribution of these land uses to landscape species richness: (i) additive partitioning of diversity at multiple spatial scales, and (ii) a measure of habitat specificity – the effective number of species that a patch contributes to landscape species richness. Native pastures had less variation between patches than grazed and ungrazed woodlands, and hence were less species-rich at the landscape scale, despite having similar richness to woodlands at the quadrat and patch scale. Habitat specificity was significantly higher for ungrazed woodland patches than all other land uses. Our results showed that in this landscape, ungrazed woodland patches had a higher contribution than the grazed land uses to landscape species richness. These results have implications for the conservation management of this landscape, and highlighted the need for greater consensus on the influence of different land uses on landscape patterns of plant diversity.

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Do temporal changes in vegetation structure additional to time since fire predict changes in bird occurrence?

- Lindenmayer, David, Candy, Steven, MacGregor, Christopher, Banks, Sam, Barton, Philip

Authors: Lindenmayer, David , Candy, Steven , MacGregor, Christopher , Banks, Sam , Barton, Philip
Date: 2016
Type: Text , Journal article
Relation: Ecological Applications Vol. 26, no. 7 (2016), p. 2267-2279
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Description: Fire is a major ecological process in ecosystems globally. Its impacts on fauna can be both direct (e.g., mortality) and indirect (e.g., altered habitat), resulting in population recovery being driven by several possible mechanisms. Separating direct from indirect impacts of fire on faunal population recovery can be valuable in guiding management of biodiversity in fire-prone environments. However, resolving the influence of direct and indirect processes remains a key challenge because many processes affecting fauna can change concomitantly with time since fire. We explore the mechanisms influencing bird response to fire by posing the question, can temporal changes in vegetation structure predict changes in bird occurrence on sites, and can these be separated from other temporal changes using the surrogate of time since fire? We conducted a 12-yr study of bird and vegetation responses to fire at 124 sites across six vegetation classes in Booderee National Park, Australia. Approximately half of these sites, established in 2002, were burned by a large (>3000 ha) wildfire in 2003. To disentangle collinear effects of temporal changes in vegetation and direct demographic effects on population recovery that are subsumed by time since fire, we incorporated both longitudinal and cross-sectional vegetation effects in addition to time since fire within logistic structural equation models. We identified temporal changes in vegetation structure and richness of plant and bird species that characterized burned and unburned sites in all vegetation classes. For nine bird species, a significant component of the year trend was driven by temporal trends in one of three vegetation variables (number of understory or midstory plant species, or midstory cover). By contrast, we could not separate temporal effects between time since fire and vegetation attributes for bird species richness, reporting rate, and the occurrence of 11 other bird species. Our findings help identify species for which indirect effects of vegetation dominate recovery and thus may benefit from vegetation management where conservation actions are required and, conversely, those species for which direct effects of time since fire drive recovery, where simply leaving a system to recover following the last disturbance will be sufficient. © 2016 by the Ecological Society of America.

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Effects of environmental variation and livestock grazing on ant community structure in temperate eucalypt woodlands

- Barton, Philip, Sato, Chloe, Kay, Geoffrey, Florance, Daniel, Lindenmayer, David

Authors: Barton, Philip , Sato, Chloe , Kay, Geoffrey , Florance, Daniel , Lindenmayer, David
Date: 2016
Type: Text , Journal article
Relation: Insect Conservation and Diversity Vol. 9, no. 2 (2016), p. 124-134
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Description: Grazing by livestock is a major ecological disturbance, with potential effects on vegetation, soil, and insect fauna. Ants are a diverse and functionally important insect group with many associations with the ground layer, yet recent global syntheses question the importance of grazing effects on ant communities relative to vegetation or soil. We examined the effects of vegetation, soil and grazing on the whole ant community, ant functional groups, and abundant species in temperate eucalypt woodlands, southeastern Australia. We found limited influence of grazing on our vegetation and soil measures, except for a positive association between grazing and exotic perennial grass cover. We also found that exotic grass cover had a negative effect on overall ant abundance and richness, but not functional groups or individual species. Soil C:N ratio had a positive effect on the subdominant Camponotini, and leaf litter cover had a positive effect on the abundance of cryptic species. Partial Mantel tests revealed an effect of both environmental and grazing measures on ant assemblage composition, but constrained ordination showed that leaf litter cover, grass biomass, and native and exotic perennial grass cover had stronger correlations with ant community structure than grazing. Our study shows that both environmental variation and grazing play a role in driving ant community structure, but that key environmental variables such as grass biomass and leaf litter cover are particularly important in temperate eucalypt woodlands. Monitoring of ant communities to measure the benefits of changed grazing regimes for biodiversity should consider contemporary grazing pressure as well as the underlying effects of variation in plants and soils. © 2016 The Royal Entomological Society.

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Higher-taxon and functional group responses of ant and bird assemblages to livestock grazing : a test of an explicit surrogate concept

- Barton, Philip, Evans, Maldwyn, Sato, Chloe, O'Loughlin, Luke, Foster, Claire

Authors: Barton, Philip , Evans, Maldwyn , Sato, Chloe , O'Loughlin, Luke , Foster, Claire
Date: 2019
Type: Text , Journal article
Relation: Ecological Indicators Vol. 96, no. (2019), p. 458-465
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Description: Biodiversity monitoring programs are routinely established to quantify changes in biotic communities in response to land management. Surrogacy is implicitly used in many such monitoring programs whereby the measurement of a component of biodiversity is used to infer responses of broader biodiversity. Yet rarely is this surrogacy validated by demonstrating that measured variables and the target variable of interest have matching responses to management treatments. Here we examined the responses of higher-taxon and functional groupings of ants and birds (our surrogate variables) two years after the implementation of experimental livestock grazing treatments, and compared these with the responses of total ant and bird species richness (our target variables) to the same treatments. We found significant and strong correlations between surrogate and target variables, but this did not predict corresponding similar response to treatments. For ants, we found that the genus Monomorium had a negative response to the grazing exclusion treatment, but there was no matching response of species richness, and so no surrogacy was identified. For birds, total species richness had a weak positive response to spring/summer grazing exclusion, and the abundance of honeyeaters (Meliphagidae) showed a similar positive response, suggesting surrogacy. Our study highlights that correlations among variables do not necessarily lead to surrogacy, and indeed that different sub-components of biotic assemblages can respond in ways that contrast with overall species richness. Careful assessment of the matched responses of surrogate and target variables to management can provide a simple and robust way to critically assess biodiversity surrogacy. © 2018 Elsevier 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**

Managing uncertainty in movement knowledge for environmental decisions

- Smith, Annabel, Kujala, Heini, Lahoz-Monfort, José, Guja, Lydia, Barton, Philip

Authors: Smith, Annabel , Kujala, Heini , Lahoz-Monfort, José , Guja, Lydia , Barton, Philip
Date: 2019
Type: Text , Journal article
Relation: Conservation Letters Vol. 12, no. 3 (2019), p.
Full Text: false
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Description: Species’ movements affect their response to environmental change but movement knowledge is often highly uncertain. We now have well-established methods to inte-grate movement knowledge into conservation practice but still lack a framework to deal with uncertainty in movement knowledge for environmental decisions. We provide a framework that distinguishes two dimensions of species’ movement that are heavily influenced by uncertainty: knowledge about movement and relevance of movement to environmental decisions. Management decisions can be informed by their position in this knowledge-relevance space. We then outline a framework to support decisions around (1) increasing understanding of the relevance of movement knowledge, (2) increasing robustness of decisions to uncertainties and (3) improving knowledge on species’ movement. Our decision-support framework provides guid-ance for managing movement-related uncertainty in systematic conservation plan-ning, agri-environment schemes, habitat restoration and international biodiversity policy. It caters to different resource levels (time and funding) so that species’ movement knowledge can be more effectively integrated into environmental decisions. © 2018 The Authors. Conservation Letters published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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

- Ng, Katherine, Nowrouzi, Somayeh, Staunton, Kyran, Barton, Philip, Driscoll, Don

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.
Full Text: false
Reviewed:
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.

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