The Threatened Growling Grass Frog in the Wimmera and Corangamite Catchments
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The Threatened Growling Grass Frog in the Wimmera and Corangamite Catchments. An Assessment of Habitat Requirements and the Utility of Automatic Call Recording Devices as a Survey Tool Michael J. Smith, Nick Clemann, Michael P. Scroggie, and Garry N. L. Peterson 2008 Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research The Threatened Growling Grass Frog in the Wimmera and Corangamite Catchments. An Assessment of Habitat Requirements and the Utility of Automatic Call Recording Devices as a Survey Tool Michael J. Smith, Nick Clemann, Michael P. Scroggie, and Garry N. L. Peterson Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research 123 Brown Street, Heidelberg, Victoria 3084 June 2008 Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research, Department of Sustainability and Environment. Heidelberg, Victoria. Report produced by: Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research Department of Sustainability and Environment PO Box 137 Heidelberg, Victoria 3084 Phone (03) 9450 8600 Website: www.dse.vic.gov.au/ari © State of Victoria, Department of Sustainability and Environment 2008 This publication is copyright. Apart from fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical or graphic) without the prior written permission of the State of Victoria, Department of Sustainability and Environment. All requests and enquires should be directed to the Customer Service Centre, 136 186 or email [email protected] Citation Smith, M. J., Clemann, N., Scroggie, M. P., and Peterson, G. N. L. (2008) The Threatened Growling Grass Frog in the Wimmera and Corangamite Catchments. An Assessment of Habitat Requirements and the Utility of Automatic Call Recording Devices as a Survey Tool. Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research. Department of Sustainability and Environment, Heidelberg, Victoria. Disclaimer This publication may be of assistance to you but the State of Victoria and its employees do not guarantee that the publication is without flaw of any kind or is wholly appropriate for your particular purposes and therefore disclaims all liability for any error, loss or other consequence which may arise from you relying on any information in this publication. Front cover photo: Growling Grass Frog Litoria raniformis (Michael Smith). All other photographs taken by Michael Smith Authorised by the Victorian Government, Melbourne. Contents List of tables and figures .........................................................................................................................ii Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................ iii Summary................................................................................................................................................... iv 1 Introduction.......................................................................................................................................6 1.1 Objectives............................................................................................................................................... 7 2 Methods ..............................................................................................................................................7 2.1 General Design ............................................................................................................................... 7 2.2 Statistical Analyses ............................................................................................................................ 11 2.2.1 Habitat Analysis.......................................................................................................................... 11 2.2.2 Timer Controlled Cassette Recorders Analysis.................................................................... 12 3 Results ............................................................................................................................................. 13 3.1 Occupancy, Detectability and Habitat Correlates................................................................. 13 3.2 Assessment of the Timer Controlled Call Recorders .......................................................... 16 4 Discussion....................................................................................................................................... 18 4.1 Recommendations.............................................................................................................. 20 5 References....................................................................................................................................... 22 i List of tables and figures Table 1: Randomly allocated start times for each timer controlled cassette recorder. Each unit was turned on twice daily and recorded for 2 minutes on each occasion...................11 Table 2: Type and number of water bodies surveyed in the Corangamite and Wimmera catchment management areas (top) and general information on the sites that the Growling Grass Frog was detected in (bottom). The number of sites for each category within which the Growling Grass Frog was detected are also listed. Note that 28 sites were not classified due to access restrictions...............................................................................14 Figure 1: Location of study sites, historical records of the Growling Grass Frog (grey dots), and significant catchment boundaries for Victoria. Catchments that included study sites are named. Sites where the Growling Grass Frog was detected (red circle) or not detected (blue circle) are shown. .........................................................................................................6 Figure 2: Location of timer controlled cassette recorders in the Wimmera and Corangamite catchments...............................................................................................................................................10 Figure 3: Faunatech timer controlled cassette recorder showing cassette timer unit (left) and installed microphone (right). ..............................................................................................................10 Figure 4: 2007/2008 survey sites showing water bodies where the Growling Grass Frog was (solid circle) or was not (open circle) detected. Grey dots show historical records. ........15 Figure 5: Posterior means (solid circle) and 95% credible intervals for parameters explaining the relationship between expected occupancy of the Growling Grass Frog and both region and the four environmental variables. The vertical dashed line indicates no effect of the covariate. ......................................................................................................................................16 Figure 6: Predicted relationships (solid) and 95% credible intervals (dashed lines) between the predicted probability of occupancy by Growling Grass Frogs and proportion of aquatic vegetation, conductivity, proportion canopy cover, and distance to the nearest woodland. Region was randomly set to a value of four (North Central CMA) for each prediction. When not a focal predictor variable, proportion aquatic vegetation was set to 0.6, conductivity to 0.05 EC, proportion canopy cover to 0.1, and distance to nearest forest to 5 km..........................................................................................................................................17 Figure 7: Predicted relationship between median posterior probability of detection (solid line) ± 95% credible intervals (dashed lines) and number of recordings...............................17 ii Acknowledgements This project was funded by the Australian Federal Government’s National Heritage Trust via the Corangamite and Wimmera Catchment Management Authorities, and the Department of Sustainability and Environment, Biodiversity Group, South West Region. We especially thank Lauren Dodd and Ruth Lennie for their contributions to the project. iii Summary An intensive survey for the Growling Grass Frog in the Wimmera and Corangamite catchments during late spring and summer of 2007/2008 was conducted to address three High Priority Actions from the Victorian State Government Department of Sustainability and Environment Actions for Biodiversity Conservation database (ABC). These Actions are also Recovery Plan Actions as outlined in the draft recovery plan for the species. The major Actions to be addressed by this research were to undertake habitat monitoring to examine and identify key habitat parameters at Growling Grass Frog sites and to test automatic call recording devices as a technique to survey and monitor the species. Conducting surveys using recognised survey techniques to determine extent and abundance of populations is a High Priority Action for the species. The project also addresses the High Priority Actions to conduct surveys to confirm existing records. The surveys were conducted within the Corangamite and Wimmera Catchment Management regions in areas with historical records of the Growling Grass Frog. We detected Growling Grass Frogs in eleven of eighty survey sites. Fourteen of the survey sites were near to historical sites and the Growling Grass Frog was detected in five of these sites. Due to imperfect probabilities of detection, effective monitoring of the Growling Grass