This study compared the efficacy of plastic glitter, with a mean particulate size of 1.18 mm, as a faecal marker in group-housed captive wombats Lasiorhinus latifrons . The wombats voluntarily consumed the glitter through the use of appetizing food vehicles. Over 40 different food treats were tested as possible vehicles for the oral delivery of the faecal marker and of these six were deemed highly palatable: (1) golden syrup with horse pellets, (2) golden syrup with weetbix, (3) pitted dates, (4) honey with kangaroo pellets, (5) nutrigel with rolled-oats, and (6) strawberry sauce with rolled-oats. Mean transit time of glitter particulates through the alimentary tract of L latifrons was 2.9 ± 0.5 d, with maximal output occurring 4.2 ± 0.3 d after administration. A marker dose of 1.6 g / 3 d was required to reach a steady and detectable state of marker output. Using this dosage > 2 particulates (i.e. flecks) of glitter were defaecated in > 90% of faecal pellets, allowing the accurate identification of individual samples. Reliable labeling was obtained using gold, silver, metallic red, metallic green, metallic blue and white glitter, i.e. digestion did not affect the integrity of these colours. There was no evidence that long-term feeding of glitter had any negative effects on the normal formation of faecal pellets, the clinical health, weight or appetite of the wombats.

ABSTRACT We describe a 226 km range extension for the known distribution of the Western Soil-Crevice Skink Proablepharus reginae in Western Australia. This record from Cape Range National Park is the first for this species on the North West Cape and within the Cape Range IBRA sub-region and marks the most westerly record of P. reginae for mainland Australia. This finding raises the terrestrial reptile species richness for the Cape Range peninsula to 90. Previous surveys in this area failed to detect P. reginae , which demonstrates the value of repeated surveys in documenting species richness in remote locations. Furthermore, we provide morphological and ecological data and discuss this record in the contexts of geographic variation and the high number of isolated reptile populations and endemism seen on the Cape Range peninsula.

ABSTRACT Long-term field-based monitoring is essential to develop a deep understanding of how ecosystems function and to identify species at risk of decline. However, conducting long-term field-based research poses some unique challenges due to the harsh environmental conditions or extreme weather events that may be encountered. Such conditions are especially likely to occur in arid environments. Fieldwork issues can arise from vehicle breakdowns, wildfires and heavy rainfall events, all of which can delay or even cancel data collection. In addition, long-term monitoring typically requires multiple observers, which may add observation bias to estimates of measured parameters. Thus there is an increasing need to develop new statistical techniques that take advantage of the power of long time-series datasets that also are incomplete. Here we discuss multivariate autoregressive state-space (MARSS) modelling; a relatively new statistical technique for modelling long-term time-series data. MARSS models allow users to investigate incomplete datasets caused by missing values. In contrast to traditional modelling techniques, such as generalised linear models that only estimate error from environmental stochasticity (process error), MARSS models estimate both process and observation errors. By estimating observation errors, researchers can incorporate bias from different observers and methods into population or other parameter estimates. To illustrate the MARSS technique we interrogate long-term animal and plant datasets from arid central Australia that contain missing values and were collected by multiple observers. We then discuss the findings from the MARSS models and their implications for management. Lastly, we suggest future applications that this technique could be used for, such as studies of animal movements and food webs.

Wild Wet Tropics tandan Tandanus tropicanus were collected from the Bloomfield River, Queensland, for examination by histopathology and bacteriology. This provided an opportunity to establish baseline information on the general health and parasite fauna of native freshwater catfish in a pristine river. Histology of gill tissue revealed epitheliocystis in one fish. This is the first report of epitheliocystis in T. tropicanus . Bacterial culture showed light growth of bacteria from the kidney of only two fish, and these were identified as Aeromonas veronii , A. jandaei and Bacillus / Lactobacillus spp. An unidentified monogenean infection was observed in the gills of four fish, and trematode metacercariae were observed in the extra-ocular tissue of four fish. Nematodes were observed in the tissues of nine fish, and sequence and preliminary phylogenetic analysis of PCR products using an ITS primer suggest that these parasites may be a previously unreported Contracaecum species.

ABSTRACT Long-term monitoring of threatened species often reveals processes undermining population recovery that may not be evident over shorter timeframes. When populations are small and isolated, normal behaviours such as dispersal may cause the loss of certain demographic stages if compensatory immigration no longer occurs. Social interactions that facilitate mate pairing can become rare, reducing the likelihood of successful breeding pairs establishing. Against a backdrop of habitat loss and degradation, these factors may make population recovery difficult to achieve. We present 15 years of monitoring data from the Central Coast of NSW targeting a small population of endangered Bush Stone-curlews Burhinus grallarius . The monitoring, undertaken by volunteers, collected breeding and banding observations between 2003 and 2018. Taken together, the data show that the number of breeding pairs fluctuates between 1 and 6, and can increase relatively quickly. However, juvenile dispersal south to highly urbanised and dangerous sites in Sydney has become a population ‘sink’, undermining population recovery. The long-term banding observations have been fundamental to understanding how juvenile dispersal affects Bush Stone-curlew population dynamics. We suggest translocating pairs to ‘stepping stone’ sites to the north of the population to exploit dispersal behaviours and enhance connectivity between the Central Coast population and breeding pairs around Port Stephens. We strongly urge the continuation of monitoring in conjunction with local habitat conservation and management to work towards sustainable and resilient Bush Stone-curlew populations.

ABSTRACT Invasive predators are identified as an important threatening process implicated in native species decline and extinction in Australia. This study aimed at developing our understanding of landscape-level spatial patterns in the red fox diet. We established prey importance based on dietary composition of red fox scats, and related this information to landscape structure. The relationship between scat composition and the frequency of detection and spatial patterns of occurrence of small mammals based on survey data from the same region was also evaluated using ordination analyses. We found that native vertebrates, dominated by Sminthopsinae , were the most important prey. However, Mus musculus were detected significantly more than Sminthopsinae across the region. Sminthopsinae were detected most frequently in traps in grazing landscapes; however, red fox scats from grazing landscapes were dominated by invertebrates. We propose these patterns may be partially driven by M. musculus abundance attracting predation pressure to the landscape and Sminthopsinae exhibiting prey naivety resulting in their disproportional representation in red fox scats.

ABSTRACT Two subspecies of blue whale occur in Australian waters, (1) the pygmy blue whale ( Balaenoptera musculus brevicauda) and (2) the Antarctic blue whale ( Balaenoptera musculus intermedia ). Understanding blue whale presence in Australian waters is critical to ensuring Australia’s protection of these marine mammals as both subspecies were heavily exploited during historical whaling. This short note documents pygmy blue whale sightings in New South Wales waters over the last 18 years. Observations were opportunistically made via citizen science and verified by scientists. Sightings in this note contribute to our limited knowledge of pygmy blue whale distribution along the east coast of Australia and may help understand the migratory movements of New Zealand pygmy blue whales off Australia and in the Tasman Sea. Overall, information presented in this note contributes to Australia’s national and international conservation efforts to protecting blue whales as a migratory and threatened species.

The koala Phascolarctos cinereus is the only member of the once diverse marsupial family Phascolarctidae to have survived the Last Glacial Maximum. A climate envelope model for P. cinereus was developed to predict the range for this species at present and at the Last Glacial Maximum. The model was compared to the contemporary koala records and the known fossil records of P. cinereus during the Quaternary. The predicted current core range for koalas was concentrated in southeast Queensland,eastern New South Wales and eastern Victoria. At the Last Glacial Maximum their predicted core range contracted significantly to southeast Queensland and northeast New South Wales. Our findings concord with other studies that find species experienced range contractions during glacial maxima. In the context of the future conservation planning for koalas in the wild, our historical perspective demonstrates the past adaptations of koalas to changes in climate and their probable range contraction to climatic refugia. The future survival of wide-ranging specialist species, such as the koala, may depend on identifying and protecting, future climatic refugia.

: Experiments with tadpoles have been used to distinguish between intra- and inter-specific interactions and between interactions that arise through direct physical contact or indirectly through water-born movement of chemicals or micro-organisms. In the case of two Australian frog species, the Green and Golden Bell Frog Litoria aurea and the Striped Marsh Frog Limnodynastes peronii , it has been suspected that there are negative chemical interactions between the tadpoles of these two species, and that management of the former species, which is considered ‘threatened’ with extinction, may have to consider such interactions. We therefore sought to evaluate the nature of any interactions between tadpoles of these two species using three experimental treatments in which each tadpole species occurred on its own (i.e., “separate”), in the same water as the other species but separated by a mesh partition (i.e., “adjacent”), and intermingling together in the same water (i.e., “mixed”). We minimized any effects of coprophagy through the use of a mesh that was below the tadpoles and through which the faeces settled and became unavailable. We found that: (a) L. aurea tadpoles grew faster but developed more slowly than Lim. peronii tadpoles; (b) for both frog species, tadpoles grew more slowly in the “adjacent” treatment than in the “mixed” or “separate” treatments, but there was no significant difference between these latter two treatments; and (c) treatment had no apparent effect on tadpole survival or development for either species. These results indicate that there were no differences between the effects of intra- and inter-specific interactions on either growth or development when tadpoles were allowed to intermingle. It is difficult to explain why our “adjacent” treatment was significantly outside the range exhibited by the other two treatments in terms of tadpole growth and there was no clear evidence of any indirect chemically-based interactions between tadpoles of the two species. As this study has provided no indication that there may be inter-specific interactions between tadpoles of L. aurea and Lim. peronii that are any different from intra-specific interactions, it does not support suggestions that L. aurea breeding habitat might be enhanced through modifications that make it less suitable for tadpoles of Lim. peronii .

ABSTRACT In conservation, consistent and extensive under-funding has necessitated creative thinking to address conservation issues on a low budget, and innovations are burgeoning as a result. One example is the use of dogs that, thanks to their heightened olfactory abilities and bond with humans, are trained to detect odours of interest to conservationists. Conservation dogs have proven to repeatedly outperform alternative survey methods in terms of accuracy, efficiency and/or cost. They have now been used for the detection of endangered and invasive species, fauna and flora, direct and indirect (e.g. scat) targets, on land and at sea, across every continent and most taxa from fire ants to whales. Here, we emphasise the versatility of detection dogs through their multiple uses applied to one species, the koala Phascolarctos cinereus . We selected, trained, tested and deployed five dogs; two for koala habitat (koala scats), one for genetic sampling (fresh scats only), one for the koala itself and one for koala disease ( Chlamydia spp. ) detection. Dogs enabled both large-scale and fine-scale survey design, with 2370 surveys performed, and 1479 genetic samples collected to date. Detection dogs are subject to similar (although sometimes much lower) limitations in terms of survey biases (e.g. individual or environmental conditions) and, importantly, detection dog/handler teams need to be tested regularly for accuracy. Nonetheless, detection dogs can, and are, helping researchers and land managers to collect more robust datasets and better inform conservation decisions. Alliances with unexpected partners in conservation (such as with police forces), citizen science, and timeshare use of dogs might improve the democratisation of their use and enable conservation detection dogs to fulfil their astonishing potential.

ABSTRACT In ecological monitoring, data on changes in biotic and environmental attributes over space and time are used to investigate the function and persistence of ecosystems, and how societal actions affect ecosystem attributes. Long-term monitoring is particularly important as it yields insights that are not possible from short-term investigations (e.g. those that span only a few seasons or years). Despite being crucial for understanding our environment, securing long-term monitoring in Australia is notoriously difficult. But there are exceptions from which we can learn. Successful monitoring can be understood by answering two key questions: What are the characteristics of effective monitoring studies? And, what factors contributed to these studies being maintained and remaining influential in the long-term? In this paper, we address these questions, primarily through collating the practical wisdom learned first-hand by a diverse set of people who have successfully led long-term monitoring programs, and subsequently formed the Long Term Ecological Research Network in Australia in 2011 through Commonwealth funding, only to see it de-funded in 2017. We synthesise these learnings to identify four key characteristics of any successful ecological monitoring program, and eight key characteristics of successful long-term monitoring. Essential features include: appropriate study design, adequate data curation and management practices, agile project management and funding strategies, concerted succession planning, diverse and strong partnerships, and varied and effective forms of communication. These features, if each attained sufficiently, should enable the necessary spectrum of (adequately-funded) activity from: (1) robustly collected and curated ecological information; to (2) scientific understanding; to (3) planned intervention; to (4) adaptive management.

ABSTRACT Continuous fauna surveys have been conducted by the Frog and Tadpole Study Group of New South Wales Inc. (FATS) at Wallingat since 1994. Between 1983 and 1994 occasional surveys were carried out by the founding members of FATS. Unlike the early surveys, which were entirely opportunistic, FATS established a series of regular survey locations within Wallingat State Forest (SF) and these sites have been routinely surveyed twice a year since 1994. In addition, opportunistic surveys were also undertaken for other fauna. The data collected from these surveys were dutifully reported to the state government agencies, who recorded the wildlife data (now under the auspices of the Office of Environment and Heritage NSW). The fauna records supplied by FATS (and other natural history groups) documented a rich and diverse fauna in Wallingat SF that includes 26 frog species (including 1 threatened species), 40 reptile species (including 2 threatened species), 30 mammal species (including 6 threatened species) and over 100 bird species (including 5 threatened species). These data paved the way for the gazetting of 6,557 ha of Wallingat SF to become Wallingat National Park (NP). The justification for the creation of the national park was mostly due to the rich biodiversity and faunal significance demonstrated by the FATS' surveys (DECCW 2010). FATS continue to survey in Wallingat NP and to compile a record of changes in the frog communities over time.

ABSTRACT In hot deserts, low, but highly variable precipitation drives resource availability, resulting in dramatic fluctuations of many consumer populations. However, the timeframes over which species respond to resource influxes are poorly understood. We pitfall-trapped ants in winter and spring over a twenty-two year period (1992–2013) in the Simpson Desert, central Australia. We asked: over what time-scale does ant activity (abundance and species richness) respond to climate (temperature and precipitation) and vegetation (plant species richness, cover and plant resources: flowering and seeding)? We considered both ‘standard lags’, i.e., the conditions at time i prior to sampling, and ‘cumulative lags’, i.e., the conditions prevailing over the entire period since time i . Ant species richness in samples responded positively to high winter temperatures, but negatively to high summer temperatures during the year prior to sampling. Short-term responses to precipitation were idiosyncratic, but longer-term responses were positive, peaking at fourteen months and probably driven indirectly through precipitation impacts on plant production. Responses to resource availability over long time frames (cumulative lags) were relatively stable, while short-term responses (standard lags) were stronger, but highly idiosyncratic, indicating that high cumulative resource availability promotes ant abundance and diversity, while short-term pulses in resource availability have less predictable impacts. The social structure of ants may allow greater flexibility in short-term responses to resource fluctuations, imparting greater long-term stability than non-social species.

Few freshwater aquatic species have ecological traits that deal with the vagaries of flow in ephemeral tropical rivers. In northern Australia, the tropical freshwater crab, Austrothelphusa transversa (von Martens, 1868) is a conspicuous species that occupies seasonal rivers, where it is thought to estivate in underground burrows while waiting for summer rain. During a survey in seasonal river catchments the first photographic evidence was obtained of an estivating female crab containing 42 crablets under the abdomen plate. Uncovering this female with crablets suggests that egg development progressing to crablets occurs during the dry season estivation when crabs are underground and no water exists in river channels; if this is the case then this female crab may have been waiting for rain, to emerge and successfully continue the life cycle in water. Since 2012 the southern Gulf of Carpentaria has experienced below average rainfall, contributing to no or short flow periods over most of the landscape. In light of modelled climate change (which predicts an increase in the number of years with low rainfall in northern Australia), along with intensification of agriculture development, it is postulated that reduced access to water might become a regular challenge for this crab species. With more data the IUCN Red List status (Least concern) for this species might need further review.