Improving coral cover using an integrated pest management framework.

Integrated pest management (IPM) leverages our understanding of ecological interactions to mitigate the impact of pest species on economically and/or ecologically important assets. It has primarily been applied in terrestrial settings (e.g.

Implications of past and present genetic connectivity for management of the saltwater crocodile ().

Effective management of protected species requires information on appropriate evolutionary and geographic population boundaries and knowledge of how the physical environment and life-history traits combine to shape the population structure and connectivity. Saltwater crocodiles () are the largest and most widely distributed of living crocodilians, extending from Sri Lanka to Southeast Asia and down to northern Australia. Given the long-distance movement capabilities reported for , management units are hypothesised to be highly connected by migration.

Land use, season, and parasitism predict metal concentrations in Australian flying fox fur.

Urban-living wildlife can be exposed to metal contaminants dispersed into the environment through industrial, residential, and agricultural applications. Metal exposure carries lethal and sublethal consequences for animals; in particular, heavy metals (e.g.

Author Correction: DNA-based identification of predators of the corallivorous Crown-of-Thorns Starfish (Acanthaster cf. solaris) from fish faeces and gut contents.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Relative efficacy of three approaches to mitigate Crown-of-Thorns Starfish outbreaks on Australia's Great Barrier Reef.

Population outbreaks of Crown-of-Thorns Starfish (COTS; Acanthaster spp.) are a major contributor to loss of hard coral throughout the Indo-Pacific. On Australia's Great Barrier Reef (GBR), management interventions have evolved over four COTS outbreaks to include: (1) manual COTS control, (2) Marine Protected Area (MPA) zoning, and, (3) water quality improvement.

DNA-based identification of predators of the corallivorous Crown-of-Thorns Starfish (Acanthaster cf. solaris) from fish faeces and gut contents.

The corallivorous Crown-of-Thorns Starfish (CoTS, Acanthaster spp.) has been linked with the widespread loss of scleractinian coral cover on Indo-Pacific reefs during periodic population outbreaks. Here, we re-examine CoTS consumption by coral reef fish species by using new DNA technologies to detect Pacific Crown-of-Thorns Starfish (Acanthaster cf.

Molecular investigation of Hepatocystis parasites in the Australian flying fox Pteropus poliocephalus across its distribution range.

Phylogenetic inference of Hepatocystis, a haemosporidian parasite of diverse primate and bat hosts, revealed that the parasites from Australasian Pteropus bat species form a distinct clade to all other Hepatocystis parasites from Africa and Asia. Here, we investigate the phylogenetic placement of Hepatocystis in the Australian bat Pteropus poliocephalus for the first time and examine parasite morphology and prevalence from selected points across its range. Hepatocystis infections were detected in low prevalences in P.

Using weather radar to monitor the number, timing and directions of flying-foxes emerging from their roosts.

Knowledge of species' population trends is crucial when planning for conservation and management; however, this information can be difficult to obtain for extremely mobile species such as flying-foxes (Pteropus spp.; Chiroptera, Pteropodidae). In mainland Australia, flying-foxes are of particular management concern due their involvement in human-wildlife conflict, and their role as vectors of zoonotic diseases; and two species, the grey-headed flying-fox (Pteropus poliocephalus) and the spectacled flying-fox (P.

Environmental drivers of spatiotemporal foraging intensity in fruit bats and implications for Hendra virus ecology.

In the Australian subtropics, flying-foxes (family Pteropididae) play a fundamental ecological role as forest pollinators. Flying-foxes are also reservoirs of the fatal zoonosis, Hendra virus. Understanding flying fox foraging ecology, particularly in agricultural areas during winter, is critical to determine their role in transmitting Hendra virus to horses and humans.

A state-space modelling approach to wildlife monitoring with application to flying-fox abundance.

Monitoring flying-foxes is challenging as their extreme mobility produces highly dynamic population processes, considerable logistic difficulty, and variability in estimated population size. We report on methods for inferring population trend for the population of the spectacled flying-fox (Pteropus conspicillatus) in Australia. Monthly monitoring is conducted at all known roost sites across the species' range in the Wet Tropics Region.

Body size and substrate type modulate movement by the western Pacific crown-of-thorns starfish, Acanthaster solaris.

The movement capacity of the crown-of-thorns starfishes (Acanthaster spp.) is a primary determinant of both their distribution and impact on coral assemblages. We quantified individual movement rates for the Pacific crown-of-thorns starfish (Acanthaster solaris) ranging in size from 75-480 mm total diameter, across three different substrates (sand, flat consolidated pavement, and coral rubble) on the northern Great Barrier Reef.

Global transcriptomic profiling in barramundi (Lates calcarifer) from rivers impacted by differing agricultural land uses.

Most catchments discharging into the Great Barrier Reef lagoon have elevated loads of suspended sediment, nutrients, and pesticides, including photosystem II inhibiting herbicides, associated with upstream agricultural land use. To investigate potential impacts of declining water quality on fish physiology, RNA sequencing (RNASeq) was used to characterize and compare the hepatic transcriptomes of barramundi (Lates calcarifer) captured from 2 of these tropical river catchments in Queensland, Australia. The Daintree and Tully Rivers differ in upstream land uses, as well as sediment, nutrient, and pesticide loads, with the area of agricultural land use and contaminant loads lower in the Daintree.

Managing breaches of containment and eradication of invasive plant populations.

Containment can be a viable strategy for managing invasive plants, but it is not always cheaper than eradication. In many cases, converting a failed eradication programme to a containment programme is not economically justified. Despite this, many contemporary invasive plant management strategies invoke containment as a fallback for failed eradication, often without detailing how containment would be implemented.

Finding our way: On the sharing and reuse of animal telemetry data in Australasia.

The presence and movements of organisms both reflect and influence the distribution of ecological resources in space and time. The monitoring of animal movement by telemetry devices is being increasingly used to inform management of marine, freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems. Here, we brought together academics, and environmental managers to determine the extent of animal movement research in the Australasian region, and assess the opportunities and challenges in the sharing and reuse of these data.

Altered transcription levels of endocrine associated genes in two fisheries species collected from the Great Barrier Reef catchment and lagoon.

The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is chronically exposed to agricultural run-off containing pesticides, many of which are known endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs). Here, we measure mRNA transcript abundance of two EDC biomarkers in wild populations of barramundi (Lates calcarifer) and coral trout (Plectropomus leopardus and Plectropomus maculatus). Transcription levels of liver vitellogenin (vtg) differed significantly in both species amongst sites with different exposures to agricultural run-off; brain aromatase (cyp19a1b) revealed some differences for barramundi only.

Are flying-foxes coming to town? Urbanisation of the spectacled flying-fox (Pteropus conspicillatus) in Australia.

Urbanisation of wildlife populations is a process with significant conservation and management implications. While urban areas can provide habitat for wildlife, some urbanised species eventually come into conflict with humans. Understanding the process and drivers of wildlife urbanisation is fundamental to developing effective management responses to this phenomenon.

Loss of frugivore seed dispersal services under climate change.

The capacity of species to track shifting climates into the future will strongly influence outcomes for biodiversity under a rapidly changing climate. However, we know remarkably little about the dispersal abilities of most species and how these may be influenced by climate change. Here we show that climate change is projected to substantially reduce the seed dispersal services provided by frugivorous vertebrates in rainforests across the Australian Wet Tropics.

The ecophysiology of seed persistence: a mechanistic view of the journey to germination or demise.

Seed persistence is the survival of seeds in the environment once they have reached maturity. Seed persistence allows a species, population or genotype to survive long after the death of parent plants, thus distributing genetic diversity through time. The ability to predict seed persistence accurately is critical to inform long-term weed management and flora rehabilitation programs, as well as to allow a greater understanding of plant community dynamics.

Dispersal and the design of effective management strategies for plant invasions: matching scales for success.

Dispersal of propagules makes invasions a fundamentally spatial phenomenon, and to be effective, management actions to control or eradicate invasive species must take this spatial structure into account. While there is a vibrant literature linking detailed dispersal measurements to the rate of invasive spread, and a separate literature focused on incorporating management into invasive models in order to improve the control of weeds, there are relatively fewer manuscripts incorporating state-of-the-art dispersal modeling and management modeling together to provide on-ground recommendations for structuring effective management. In this paper, we perform a generalized analysis of a spatially explicit, individual-based simulation model of invasion management with empirically determined dispersal processes, illustrated with the example of Miconia calvescens in the Australian Wet Tropics rain forest, to explore how matching the spatial scale of management to the spatial scale of the dispersal processes underpinning invasion influences the success of management.

Identifying priority areas for conservation and management in diverse tropical forests.

The high concentration of the world's species in tropical forests endows these systems with particular importance for retaining global biodiversity, yet it also presents significant challenges for ecology and conservation science. The vast number of rare and yet to be discovered species restricts the applicability of species-level modelling for tropical forests, while the capacity of community classification approaches to identify priorities for conservation and management is also limited. Here we assessed the degree to which macroecological modelling can overcome shortfalls in our knowledge of biodiversity in tropical forests and help identify priority areas for their conservation and management.

Tick paralysis in spectacled flying-foxes (Pteropus conspicillatus) in North Queensland, Australia: impact of a ground-dwelling ectoparasite finding an arboreal host.

When a parasite finds a new wildlife host, impacts can be significant. In the late 1980s populations of Spectacled Flying-foxes (SFF) (Pteropus conspicillatus), a species confined, in Australia, to north Queensland became infected by paralysis tick (Ixodes holocyclus), resulting in mortality. This Pteropus-tick relationship was new to Australia.