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Native and Invasive Mammalian Carnivores in a Forestry and Agricultural Landscape in Northwest Tasmania

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Native and Invasive Mammalian Carnivores in a Forestry and Agricultural Landscape in Northwest Tasmania Native and invasive mammalian carnivores in a forestry and agricultural landscape in northwest Tasmania. By Joanna Margaret Lyall B.App.Sc. (UTas) (Hons.) (UTas) August 2017 A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Life Science at the University of Tasmania School of Biological Sciences Hobart, Tasmania Statement of Originality This thesis contains no material which has been accepted for a degree or diploma by the University or any other institution, except by way of background information and duly acknowledged in the thesis, and to the best of my knowledge and belief no material previously published or written by another person except where due acknowledgement is made in the text of the thesis, nor does the thesis contain any material that infringes copyright. Joanna Lyall August 2017 Statement on authority of access This thesis may be made available for loan and limited copying in accordance with the Copyright Act 1968. Joanna Lyall August 2017 Statement of Ethical Conduct (where applicable) The research associated with this thesis abides by the international and Australian codes on human and animal experimentation, the guidelines by the Australian Government's Office of the Gene Technology Regulator and the rulings of the Safety, Ethics and Institutional Biosafety Committees of the University. Joanna Lyall August 2017 i Statement of co-authorship The following people contributed to the work undertaken as part of this thesis: Joanna Lyall (Candidate), School of Biological Sciences, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia Menna Jones (Primary supervisor), School of Biological Sciences, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia Christopher Johnson (Co-supervisor), School of Biological Sciences, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia Sarah Munks (Co-supervisor), Forest Practices Authority and School of Biological Sciences, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia Chapter details and relative author contributions are listed below: Chapter 2 is in preparation for publication: Lyall, J. M., Johnson, C.N., Munks, S., and Jones, M.E. Factors in a disturbed landscape influencing distribution and abundance of spotted-tailed quails, devils and cats Joanna Lyall was the primary investigator and lead author. Chris Johnson, Sarah Munks and Menna Jones contributed to the idea, the study design and edited chapters. Chapter 3 is in preparation for publication: Lyall, J. M., Johnson, C.N., Munks, S., and Jones, M.E. Factors in plantations influencing presence of spotted-tailed quails, devils and cats Joanna Lyall was the primary investigator and lead author. Chris Johnson, Sarah Munks and Menna Jones contributed to the idea, the study design and edited chapters. We the undersigned agree with the above stated "proportion of work undertaken" for each of the above submitted peer-reviewed manuscripts contributing to this thesis: Signed: Signed: Menna Jones Mark Hunt Primary Supervisor Head of School School of Biological Sciences School of Biological Sciences University of Tasmania University of Tasmania August 2017 August 2017 ii Ethics Statement This study was conducted with ethics approval from the University of Tasmania Animal Ethics Committee Animal Ethics Committee, approval number: A13588, 6 November 2013. Acknowledgments I would like to thank my supervisors Menna Jones, Chris Johnson and Sarah Munks for guiding me through the maze, undertaking this research. Menna, always an inspiration for clarifying the way to approach the next stage, Chris for his calm appraisal and suggestions for writing up, and Sarah for helping me overcome glitches along the way with suggestions and support. I would also like to thank Shannon Troy, Amy Koch and Pep Turner for advice in handling the data and Daniel Livingstone for calculating the landscape feature variables using ArcMap. I thank Michael Dreisson for his time and expertise, running through images to confirm identification of the various small animals detected on camera. I thank my son Kevin Lyall for saving me time and again when programs crashed, when the computer played up and when just before Christmas, my computer decided it had had enough and died completely. I would also like to express my appreciation for all the landholders who allowed me to access their land to set up the camera sites. Thank you all very much, you were an essential part of this study. To my beautiful mad family, Kevin and Amanda, Rain and Beck, Garry and Zoe plus of course our gorgeous grandchildren, who have put up with me only being half with them for the past four years and have provided the laughs and support when desperately needed. Thank you for your love and encouragement. Finally, and most importantly, Jim Lyall, my husband, research assistant extraordinaire, cheer leader and support crew. I could not have done any of this study without you. You have been there every step of the way assisting with the fieldwork, encouraging me when I felt I would never get there and providing me with the love and support I needed to complete what felt at times to be an odyssey. Thank you I dedicate this thesis to Bob, Barbara and Richard Robson, my parents and brother who inspired in me a love of nature and gave me the freedom to explore it Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty. Albert Einstein iii Abstract Globally, human activities including land clearing, habitat conversion and degradation, and human induced climate change are putting immense pressures on biodiversity. Habitat change is a primary cause of species decline and extinction, but in many places invasive predators, often favoured by habitat change, also have had large impacts on biodiversity through direct predation, competition and disease transmission. In the Australian island State of Tasmania, a higher percentage of the original forest cover has been maintained than in other parts of Australia, retaining 63.8% of its c1750 forest cover, or 3.06 million hectares. Of this, following selective logging, clear-felling for regeneration or conversion to plantation species, approximately 25% of old growth forest remains. Land clearing for agriculture in Tasmania occurred particularly in the fertile country at lower altitudes, while forestry activities generally continued at higher elevations. These changes to habitat affect the fauna differentially. In Tasmania, some mammal species such as the Tasmanian pademelon Thylogale billardierii appear to benefit from forest fragmentation and the introduction of exotic pasture species in proximity to refuge, however other species are likely to experience population decline through this loss of habitat. Within this fragmented landscape are the native marsupial predators, the Tasmanian devil Sarcophilus harrisii and spotted-tailed quoll Dasyurus maculatus and the introduced feral/domestic cat Felis catus. Recently, populations of the devil have declined by up to 85% because of Devil Facial Tumour Disease (DFTD), a lethal transmissible cancer that was first detected in 1996 and has spread across most of the island. Persecution of the devil and quoll still occurs. The cat became established throughout Tasmania following introduction at the time of European settlement and competes with the native carnivores in addition to carrying the disease, Toxoplasmosis gondii, to which many of the native herbivores are susceptible. Few studies have examined in depth, the combination of available prey, landscape use and site level features determining whether devils, quolls or cats will use a particular site. Chapter 2 of this study aims to investigate further the way quolls, devils and cats are using this perturbed landscape, identifying the features at landscape and site level where each species is more abundant and relationships between the species. While Chapter 3 further analyses the use of plantations for new insights into the factors that influence the use of plantations by each species. Within a study area of approximately 250,000 ha in north-west Tasmania, I used camera survey data from 150 sites over two seasons to investigate the distribution and abundance of, and relationships between, the quoll, devil iv and cat in relation to site and landscape factors within four land use categories. I used N-mixture modelling (Royle, 2004) with K=15 to estimate the direction and size of effect of the selected environmental parameters on the abundance of each predator species across the study area. As I was able to identify individual animals, I ran single species abundance models using the unmarked Point Count package “pcount”, for both the winter and summer “seasons”. This provides an estimation of abundance of each of the predators at each site. Quolls and devils were more abundant at the same sites, and cats and devils had no adverse influence on each other’s presence, however there was some evidence that quolls and cats avoid each other or choose different habitats. Quolls appeared to be more specialised in their habitat requirements than the other two species, with taller forests and understorey qualities influencing their occurrence, while elevation, forest cover and prey emerged as factors influencing the abundance of the devil. Cats were more abundant on the edges of agricultural land with this study indicating cover, including trees and undergrowth, is an important factor. Quolls and devils were less abundant in plantations than nearby forests while cats were more abundant in plantations
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