Variation in the manna of Eucalyptus viminalis Department and University: School of Natural Sciences, University of Tasmania Supervisory team: Geoff While, Julianne O’Reilly-Wapstra and Peter Harrison Amy Wing May 2020 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree Bachelor of Science with Honours Declaration I hereby declare that this thesis contains no material which has previously been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma and contains no copy or paraphrase of material previously published or written by any other person, except where due reference is made in the text of this thesis. Statement on authority to access This thesis may be made available for loan and limited copying in accordance with the Copyright Act 1968. Signed: Amy Wing Date: 20/05/2020 1 Acknowledgements I would love to thank my three amazing supervisors, Geoff, Julianne and Peter. This project was a blast, I loved all the knowledge and enthusiasm you all had towards me and my project. Thank you Geoff for getting me into such an amazing project and team, despite the fact I am not being a Lizard person. The immense support and advice on my work, no matter the hour, was such a huge help. Thanks to Peter for all the expertise in all things statistics. The hours upon hours you dedicated to helping me wrap my head around the data was absolutely essential for what I achieved. And thank you to Julianne for being such a great support and encouragement in my writing. Towards the end of this project, when we had to all work at a distance, all those small words of encouragement helped me keep going. I was honestly blessed to have all three of you as apart of my honours experience and I hope you all know how much you are appreciated. A huge thank you to Sally Bryant and the Tasmanian Land Conservancy for awarding me the Bird Conservation Fund Scholarship. Thank you for taking on this bright and bubbly character. Sally, your commitment to the protecting the forty-spotted pardalote and so many other creatures is inspiring and it was lovely to spend time on Bruny Island with you as I tried my best to absorb your extensive knowledge. Thank you to Greening Australia and all the property owners that allowed me to come and sample on their properties. There was so much enthusiasm and encouragement for my research, and always a chatty face to almost all properties I rocked up too. Thank you to Jimmy Collinson from Greening Australia for helping me find my common garden field trials. As well as a big thank you to Roderic O’Connor and Adrian for allowing me onto their beautiful property in Connorville, and to Geoff and Anthea Hendley for access to their farm in Relbia. I would also love to thank all the property owners on Bruny Island and the overall enthusiasm to my research. Thanks Tonia Cochran of Inala Nature Tours, Lauchlan Story, Daniel Sprod, Ben Kienhuis and the managers at the Murryfield Station. Thank you, David Nichols, and your team in the Central Science Laboratory for helping me with the chemical analysis. It was fun being a lab coat wearing scientist, even if just for a few days. Thank you to the School of Natural Sciences for all the cake and tea sessions early on. There is a great family feel within this group and you all helped me and my group feel so welcome and comfortable here! Also thanks to David Green, Glen Bain, Paul Tilyard and Thomas Baker for all the help in my field work and the many silly questions around paper work. Also, a big shout out to Hugh Fitzgerald, for your extra help in my chemical analysis and organising of field work, you went above and beyond, so thank you! Thank you, Tanya Bailey, for your help with my sampling in Midlands, and for giving me a place to stay. Our therapy discussions amongst the trees and all your time in the field will always be remembered. 2 Thank you to all my friends and volunteers who kept me company in the field, some days with only a few hours’ notice. Sophia, Maryanne, Jake, Richard, Tom, Zoe and Melanie, you were all such a huge help and made the hours in the sun even better! A big thanks to my mid-year cohort, Zoë, Zach, Elizabeth, Laura and Fiona. Thanks for coming along for this crazy adventure. None of us expected the turn of events that happened due to COVID-19, but we managed to remain as a great group and support each other throughout, and I hope we remain friends for a long time. I’d like to thank my friends and family for the extra support throughout this project. Thanks to my parents for all the encouragement throughout my whole science degree and the huge amount of support from my partner, Tom, especially in those final few weeks. Finishing my thesis in isolation was not easy, but I can thank every one of you for picking up the phone or logging onto Zoom when I just needed a chat or study buddy. And finally, thanks to the University of Tasmania and particularly the Natural Sciences for accepting me as a honours student. I know I cannot have possibly remembered all the people that helped me out this year, as there were just so many people who helped me and made this experience great. I thank every single one of you as this will be an experience I remember forever. 3 Contents ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................... 5 Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 6 Eucalyptus woodlands as foundation species ................................................................................. 6 The importance of sugary resources ............................................................................................... 7 The important relationship between the Forty-Spotted Pardalote and Eucalyptus viminalis ........ 8 What do we know about manna? ................................................................................................... 9 Aims ............................................................................................................................................... 10 Methods ................................................................................................................................... 12 Part one: Common-garden field trials ........................................................................................... 12 Part two: Bruny Island ................................................................................................................... 16 Manna Analysis by Liquid-Chromatography Mass-Spectrometry ................................................ 18 Tree traits and environmental variables ....................................................................................... 19 Data Analysis ................................................................................................................................. 19 Common garden field trials ........................................................................................................... 20 Natural populations of E. viminalis at Bruny Island ...................................................................... 21 Results ...................................................................................................................................... 23 Discussion ................................................................................................................................. 34 Variation in manna across the common garden field trials .............................................................. 35 Variation in manna across the native distribution of E. viminalis .................................................... 36 Manna quality and the forty-spotted pardalote distribution ........................................................... 38 Future directions and Implications of research ................................................................................. 39 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................. 41 SUPPORTING MATERIAL .......................................................................................................... 46 LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................................................ 47 ...................................................................................................................................................... 55 4 ABSTRACT Plant resources are essential for animal distribution and survival in all communities. Therefore, it is of uppermost importance that ecologists understand how resources respond in changing conditions to aid in future conservation and management of natural spaces. This is particularly so regarding foundation species, where subtle intraspecific changes in their plant resources can have broad scale effects throughout the community. The manna of Eucalyptus viminalis is an essential food source of the endangered forty-spotted pardalote (Pardalotus quadragintus). Manna is not well understood or studied and the potential response under climate change is unknown. This study aimed to explore the mechanisms behind manna trait variation in a two separate approaches. 1) to explore if manna exhibits variation influenced by genetic and environmental factors, by utilising two common-garden field trials in the Tasmanian Midlands. 2) to explore manna variation across native distributions of E. viminalis