Experiments in no-impact control of dingoes: Comment on Allen et al. 2013

There has been much recent debate in Australia over whether lethal control of dingoes incurs environmental costs, particularly by allowing increase of populations of mesopredators such as red foxes and feral cats. Allen et al. (2013) claim to show in their recent study that suppression of dingo activity by poison baiting does not lead to mesopredator release, because mesopredators are also suppressed by poisoning. We show that this claim is not supported by the data and analysis reported in Allen et al.'s paper. © 2014 Johnson et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd

Cranial Shape and the Modularity of Hybridization in Dingoesand Dogs; Hybridization Does Not Spell the End for NativeMorphology

Australia’s native wild dog, the dingo (Canis dingo), is threatened by hybridization with feral or domestic dogs. In this study we provide the first comprehensive three dimensional geometric morphometric evaluation of cranial shape for dingoes, dogs and their hybrids. We introduce a novel framework to assess whether modularity facilitates, or constrains, cranial shape change in hybridization. Our results show that hybrid and pure dingo morphology overlaps greatly, meaning that hybrids cannot be reliably distinguished from dingoes on the basis of cranial metrics. We find that dingo morphology is resistant, with observed hybrids exhibiting morphology closer to the dingo than to the parent group dog. We also find that that hybridization with dog breeds does not push the dingo cranial morphology towards the wolf phenotype. Disparity and integration analyses on the ten recovered modules provided empirical support for modularity facilitating shape change over short evolutionary time scales. However, our results show that this is may not be the case in hybridization events, which were not influenced by module integration or disparity levels. We conclude that although hybridization events may introduce breed dog DNA to the dingo population, the native cranial morphology, and therefore likely the feeding eco-niche, of the dingo population is resistant to change. Our results have implications for conservation and management of dingoes and, more broadly, for the influence of integration patterns over ecological time scales in relation to selection pressure

Natural and Anthropogenic Influences on a Red-Crowned Crane Habitat in the Yellow River Delta Natural Reserve, 1992–2008

This study aims to assess the relative importance of natural and anthropogenic variables on the change of the red-crowned crane habitat in the Yellow River Nature Reserve, East China using multitempopral remote sensing and geographic information system. Satellite images were used to detect the change in potential crane habitat, from which suitable crane habitat was determined by excluding fragmented habitat. In this study, a principal component analysis (PCA) with seven variables (channel flow, rainfall, temperature, sediment discharge, number of oil wells, total length of roads, and area of settlements) and linear regression analyses of potential and suitable habitat against the retained principal components were applied to explore the influences of natural and anthropogenic factors on the change of the red-crowned crane habitat. The experimental results indicate that suitable habitat decreased by 5,935 ha despite an increase of 1,409 ha in potential habitat from 1992 to 2008. The area of crane habitat changed caused by natural drivers such as progressive succession, retrogressive succession, and physical fragmentation is almost the same as that caused by anthropogenic forces such as land use change and behavioral fragmentation. The PCA and regression analyses revealed that natural factors (e.g., channel flow, rainfall, temperature, and sediment discharge) play an important role in the crane potential habitat change and human disturbances (e.g., oil wells, roads, and settlements) jointly explain 51.8 % of the variations in suitable habitat area, higher than 48.2 % contributed by natural factors. Thus, it is vital to reduce anthropogenic influences within the reserve in order to reverse the decline in the suitable crane habitat