Ecological Impacts of Metallic Starling Colonies in Tropical Queensland, Australia

Animal aggregations – whereby large numbers of animals come together at one place at one time – can have dramatic impacts on individuals, populations and ecosystems. In many cases, they are also unique forms of animal interaction, and include some of the world’s most recognised wildlife spectacles. But despite these traits, the causes and consequences of animal aggregations are often poorly understood. One such case involves large colonies of metallic starlings (Aplonis metallica) that nest together in emergent rainforest trees in northern Queensland, Australia. Starling colonies attract a diverse assemblage of wildlife, which utilise resources dropped by the starlings. Remarkably, these animal aggregations have never been described, and thus broader questions about their influence on ecosystems in tropical Australia remain unanswered. My thesis aims to describe this system, begin to answer some of these questions, and elucidate broad patterns common to other aggregations of animals worldwide. It focuses on the starlings themselves and the reasons for their choice of colonial nest sites. It also explores the lives of the animals using the starling colonies, with specific chapters on native birds and feral pigs, invasive cane toads, and the ways these species mediate the influence of starling colonies on the surrounding ecosystem

Warkworth 12-m VLBI Station: WARK12M

This report summarizes the geodetic VLBI activities in New Zealand in 2010. It provides geographical and technical details of WARK12M - the new IVS network station operated by the Institute for Radio Astronomy and Space Research (IRASR) of Auckland University of Technology (AUT). The details of the VLBI system installed in the station are outlined along with those of the collocated GNSS station. We report on the status of broadband connectivity and on the results of testing data transfer protocols; we investigate UDP protocols such as 'tsunami' and UDT and demonstrate that the UDT protocol is more efficient than 'tsunami' and 'ftp'. In general, the WARK12M IVS network station is fully equipped, connected and tested to start participating in regular IVS observational sessions from the beginning of 2011.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, Accepeted for the IVS 2010 Annual Repor

The development of English and Japanese phonology in a bilingual child aged 1 year 3 months to 1 year 8 months : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Social Science at Massey University

Language used by a child between the ages of 1;3 and 1;8 was recorded while she was being brought up in a bilingual English-Japanese home environment. The words used by the child were phonologically analysed to determine whether there was any evidence for a structural theory or a frequency theory of phonological development. Evidence was found to support and to contradict each of these types of theory. It was found that either a) the child chose to attempt only words which contained a high proportion of phonemes she knew she could utter or b) the frequency of the parents' phonemes was modified from the frequency of standard adult speech when the parent was talking to the child. Little evidence of phonological interference between the two languages was observed during the course of this study