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Correlates of recent declines of rodents in Northern and Southern Australia: habitat structure is critical
Citation
Lawes, MJ and Fisher, DO and Johnson, CN and Blomberg, SP and Frank, ASK and Fritz, SA and McCallum, H and VanDerWal, J and Abbott, BN and Legge, S and Letnic, M and Thomas, CR and Thurgate, N and Fisher, A and Gordon, IJ and Kutt, A, Correlates of recent declines of rodents in Northern and Southern Australia: habitat structure is critical, PLoS ONE, 10, (6) Article e0130626. ISSN 1932-6203 (2015) [Refereed Article]
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Copyright Statement
© 2015 Lawes et al. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
DOI: doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0130626
Abstract
Australia has experienced dramatic declines and extinctions of its native rodent species
over the last 200 years, particularly in southern Australia. In the tropical savanna of northern
Australia significant declines have occurred only in recent decades. The later onset of these
declines suggests that the causes may differ from earlier declines in the south. We examine
potential regional effects (northern versus southern Australia) on biological and ecological
correlates of range decline in Australian rodents. We demonstrate that rodent declines have
been greater in the south than in the tropical north, are strongly influenced by phylogeny,
and are consistently greater for species inhabiting relatively open or sparsely vegetated
habitat. Unlike in marsupials, where some species have much larger body size than
rodents, body mass was not an important predictor of decline in rodents. All Australian
rodent species are within the prey-size range of cats (throughout the continent) and red
foxes (in the south). Contrary to the hypothesis that mammal declines are related directly to
ecosystem productivity (annual rainfall), our results are consistent with the hypothesis that
disturbances such as fire and grazing, which occur in non-rainforest habitats and remove
cover used by rodents for shelter, nesting and foraging, increase predation risk. We agree
with calls to introduce conservation management that limits the size and intensity of fires, increases fire patchiness and reduces grazing impacts at ecological scales appropriate for
rodents. Controlling feral predators, even creating predator-free reserves in relatively
sparsely-vegetated habitats, is urgently required to ensure the survival of rodent species,
particularly in northern Australia where declines are not yet as severe as those in the south.
Item Details
| Item Type: | Refereed Article |
|---|---|
| Keywords: | threatened species, invasive species, predators, mesopredators, feral cat |
| Research Division: | Biological Sciences |
| Research Group: | Ecology |
| Research Field: | Terrestrial Ecology |
| Objective Division: | Environment |
| Objective Group: | Flora, Fauna and Biodiversity |
| Objective Field: | Flora, Fauna and Biodiversity at Regional or Larger Scales |
| UTAS Author: | Johnson, CN (Professor Christopher Johnson) |
| UTAS Author: | Frank, ASK (Dr Anke Frank) |
| ID Code: | 102545 |
| Year Published: | 2015 |
| Funding Support: | Australian Research Council (LP100100033) |
| Web of Science® Times Cited: | 16 |
| Deposited By: | Zoology |
| Deposited On: | 2015-08-27 |
| Last Modified: | 2018-03-17 |
| Downloads: | 107 View Download Statistics |
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