Tipping back the balance: recolonization of the Macquarie Island isthmus by king penguins (Aptenodytes patagonicus) following extermination for human gain

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when blubber oil fuelled house lamps, the king penguin population at Macquarie Island was reduced from two very large (perhaps hundreds of thousands of birds) colonies to about 3000 birds. One colony, located on the isthmus when the island was discovered in 1810, was extinct by 1894 and it took about 100 years for king penguins to re-establish a viable breeding population there. Here we document this recovery. The first eggs laid at Gadget Gully on the isthmus were recorded in late February 1995 but in subsequent years egg laying took place earlier between November and February (this temporal discontinuity is a consequence of king penguin breeding behaviour). The first chick was hatched in April 1995 but the first fledging was not raised until the following breeding season in October 1996. The colony increased on average 66% per annum in the five years between 1995 and 2000. King penguins appear resilient to catastrophic population reductions, and as the island\u27s population increases, it is likely that other previously abandoned breeding sites will be reoccupied

Using Spatio-temporal Modelling as a Decision Support Tool for Management of a Native Pest Herbivore

Landscape modification can alter the distribution and abundance of wildlife, which can result in irruptions of native species causing significant impacts on economically and ecologically valuable systems. This study investigated the applications of the Spatio- Temporal Animal Reduction (STAR) model, originally designed for the management of feral ungulates, by adapting it for the management of a native pest herbivore (the Tasmanian pademelon, Thylogale billardierii) within an agricultural-forest mosaic, typical of Tasmanian (Australian) agricultural landscapes. Empirical data of habitat and demographic features of a pest population were inputted into STAR to test the cost-effectiveness of three simulated density reduction models. Compared with the projected population growth under no management, simulations demonstrated that low, medium and high density reduction all reduced population abundance over 10 years. Cost increased with the level of population reduction due to increasing difficulty with locating individuals. The revenue gained from a simulated harvest was greatest for medium-intensity density reduction. We propose STAR can be used as a decision support tool to guide situations considering resource availability, browsing intensity and site- specific management objectives. The application of STAR highlights the model’s adaptability across diverse pest populations, landscape features and where there is competition for resources between domestic and native populations

Complex interplay between intrinsic and extrinsic drivers of long-term survival trends in southern elephant seals

BACKGROUND: Determining the relative contribution of intrinsic and extrinsic factors to fluctuations in population size, trends and demographic composition is analytically complex. It is often only possible to examine the combined effects of these factors through measurements made over long periods, spanning an array of population densities or levels of food availability. Using age-structured mark-recapture models and datasets spanning five decades (1950–1999), and two periods of differing relative population density, we estimated age-specific probabilities of survival and examined the combined effects of population density and environmental conditions on juvenile survival of southern elephant seals at Macquarie Island. RESULTS: First-year survival decreased with density during the period of highest population size, and survival increased during years when the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) anomaly (deviation from a 50-year mean) during the mother's previous foraging trip to sea was positive (i.e., El Niño). However, when environmental stochasticity and density were considered together, the effect of density on first-year survival effectively disappeared. Ignoring density effects also leads to models placing too much emphasis on the environmental conditions prevailing during the naïve pup's first year at sea. CONCLUSION: Our analyses revealed that both the state of the environment and population density combine to modify juvenile survival, but that the degree to which these processes contributed to the variation observed was interactive and complex. This underlines the importance of evaluating the relative contribution of both the intrinsic and extrinsic factors that regulate animal populations because false conclusions regarding the importance of population regulation may be reached if they are examined in isolation

View From Below: Inferring Behavior and Physiology of Southern Ocean Marine Predators From Dive Telemetry

Air-breathing marine animals, such as seals and seabirds, undertake a special form of central-place foraging as they must obtain their food at depth yet return to the surface to breathe. While telemetry technologies have advanced our understanding of the foraging behavior and physiology of these marine predators, the proximate and ultimate influences controlling the diving behavior of individuals are still poorly understood. Over time, a wide variety of analytical approaches have been developed for dive data obtained via telemetry, making comparative studies and syntheses difficult even amongst closely-related species. Here we review publications using dive telemetry for 24 species (marine mammals and seabirds) in the Southern Ocean in the last decade (2006–2016). We determine the key questions asked, and examine how through the deployment of data loggers these questions are able to be answered. As part of this process we describe the measured and derived dive variables that have been used to make inferences about diving behavior, foraging, and physiology. Adopting a question-driven orientation highlights the benefits of a standardized approach for comparative analyses and the development of models. Ultimately, this should promote robust treatment of increasingly complex data streams, improved alignment across diverse research groups, and also pave the way for more integrative multi-species meta-analyses. Finally, we discuss key emergent areas in which dive telemetry data are being upscaled and more quantitatively integrated with movement and demographic information to link to population level consequences

Big data analyses reveal patterns and drivers of the movements of southern elephant seals

The growing number of large databases of animal tracking provides an opportunity for analyses of movement patterns at the scales of populations and even species. We used analytical approaches, developed to cope with big data, that require no a priori assumptions about the behaviour of the target agents, to analyse a pooled tracking dataset of 272 elephant seals (Mirounga leonina) in the Southern Ocean, that was comprised of >500,000 location estimates collected over more than a decade. Our analyses showed that the displacements of these seals were described by a truncated power law distribution across several spatial and temporal scales, with a clear signature of directed movement. This pattern was evident when analysing the aggregated tracks despite a wide diversity of individual trajectories. We also identified marine provinces that described the migratory and foraging habitats of these seals. Our analysis provides evidence for the presence of intrinsic drivers of movement, such as memory, that cannot be detected using common models of movement behaviour. These results highlight the potential for big data techniques to provide new insights into movement behaviour when applied to large datasets of animal tracking.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figures, 6 supplementary figure

A two-phase model for smoothly joining disparate growth phases in the macropodid Thylogale billardierii

Generally, sigmoid curves are used to describe the growth of animals over their lifetime. However, because growth rates often differ over an animal's lifetime a single curve may not accurately capture the growth. Broken-stick models constrained to pass through a common point have been proposed to describe the different growth phases, but these are often unsatisfactory because essentially there are still two functions that describe the lifetime growth. To provide a single, converged model to age animals with disparate growth phases we developed a smoothly joining two-phase nonlinear function (SJ2P), tailored to provide a more accurate description of lifetime growth of the macropod, the Tasmanian pademelon Thylogale billardierii. The model consists of the Verhulst logistic function, which describes pouch-phase growth--joining smoothly to the Brody function, which describes post-pouch growth. Results from the model demonstrate that male pademelons grew faster and bigger than females. Our approach provides a practical means of ageing wild pademelons for life history studies but given the high variability of the data used to parametrise the second growth phase of the model, the accuracy of ageing of post-weaned animals is low: accuracy might be improved with collection of longitudinal growth data. This study provides a unique, first robust method that can be used to characterise growth over the lifespan of pademelons. The development of this method is relevant to collecting age-specific vital rates from commonly used wildlife management practices to provide crucial insights into the demographic behaviour of animal populations.Financial support was provided by the Tasmanian Community Forest Agreement: Alternatives to 1080 Programme. In-kind support was provided by the University of Tasmania

Introduced species and extreme weather as key drivers of reproductive output in three sympatric albatrosses

Invasive species present a major conservation threat globally and nowhere are their affects more pronounced than in island ecosystems. Determining how native island populations respond demographically to invasive species can provide information to mitigate the negative effects of invasive species. Using 20 years of mark-recapture data from three sympatric species of albatrosses (black-browed Thalassarche melanophris, grey-headed T. chrysostoma, and light-mantled albatrosses Phoebetria palpebrata), we quantified the influence of invasive European rabbits Oryctolagus cuniculus and extreme weather patterns on breeding probability and success. Temporal variability in rabbit density explained 33–76% of the variability in breeding probability for all three species, with severe decreases in breeding probability observed after a lag period following highest rabbit numbers. For black-browed albatrosses, the combination of extreme rainfall and high rabbit density explained 33% of total trait variability and dramatically reduced breeding success. We showed that invasive rabbits and extreme weather events reduce reproductive output in albatrosses and that eliminating rabbits had a positive effect on albatross reproduction. This illustrates how active animal management at a local breeding site can result in positive population outcomes even for wide ranging animals like albatrosses where influencing vital rates during their at-sea migrations is more challenging