Tangibility: highlighting physicality in interactive installations.

Touch is our connection to our world and, as digital technologies develop, we must find ways to recontextualise touch within emerging digital spaces. This paper discusses the development of 'Tangibility', an installation combining tangible interaction, synaesthetic visualisations, and lens based animation techniques to encourage audiences to explore tactility. It introduces a system of sensual analysis and presents an interpretation of Laban's effort analysis as an evaluation tool for the effectiveness and design of tangible interfaces. It also explores how Kennedy's "Aesthetics of Sensation" can be adapted for synaesthetic visualisations and discusses how materiality within lens based animation techniques creates physicality within an image

Tangibility: highlighting physicality in interactive installations.

Touch is our connection to our world and, as digital technologies develop, we must find ways to recontextualise touch within emerging digital spaces. This paper discusses the development of 'Tangibility', an installation combining tangible interaction, synaesthetic visualisations, and lens based animation techniques to encourage audiences to explore tactility. It introduces a system of sensual analysis and presents an interpretation of Laban's effort analysis as an evaluation tool for the effectiveness and design of tangible interfaces. It also explores how Kennedy's "Aesthetics of Sensation" can be adapted for synaesthetic visualisations and discusses how materiality within lens based animation techniques creates physicality within an image

Plastic ingestion by Flesh-footed Shearwaters, Puffinus carneipes, and Wedge-tailed Shearwaters, Puffinus pacificus

The population of Flesh-footed Shearwaters, Puffinus carneipes, on Lord Howe Island, Australia, has decreased over recent decades. Known threats include long-line fishing and loss of nesting habitat. The recent occurrence of plastic debris in breeding colonies has raised concerns that plastic ingestion also may be contributing to the decline of this species. In this paper we investigate the extent of plastic ingestion by Flesh-footed and Wedge-tailed shearwaters, Puffinus pacificus, on Lord Howe Island. The remains offailed Flesh-footed Shearwater fledglings contained substantial quantities of plastics: up to 37 cm3, equivalent to at least 31% of proventricular capacity. Road-killed adults (n=21) had no plastic in their proventriculus. Proventricular contents of near-fledged birds, obtained by non-lethal means, showed that 79% of Flesh-footed Shearwaters and 43% of Wedge-tailed Shearwaters contained plastics, in volumes of up to 18.0 cm3 and 2.8 cm3, respectively. Plastic loads were significantly less in Wedge-tailed Shearwaters, the difference possibly due to different densities of plastic within the foraging locations of each species. The impact of plastic ingestion on the survival of Flesh-footed Shearwater chicks and fledglings, and the consequent impacts on the demography of the population are unknown and warrant further investigation

Movements of feral camels in central Australia determined by satellite telemetry

Movements of two female one-humped camels in central Australia were tracked using satellite telemetry between March 1986 and July 1987. During that time both animals travelled a minimum distance of over 1000 km within a radius of 125 km for one animal, and 200 km for the other. However, their movements were uite punctuated and both animals spent periods of up to several months in rleatively small areas before moving over longer distances to new areas. Both camels moved at greater rates overnight. An activity index, probably measuring feeding rate, declined during the study period for both animals. Patchy and sporadic rainfall may explain some of these results

Niche partitioning by three Pterodroma petrel species during non-breeding in the equatorial Pacific Ocean

Niche divergence is expected for species that compete for shared resources, including migrants that occupy similar regions during the non-breeding season. Studies of temperate seabirds indicate that both spatial and behavioural segregation can be important mechanisms for reducing competition, but there have been few investigations of resource partitioning by closely related taxa in low productivity, tropical environments. We investigated niche partitioning in 3 gadfly petrel taxa, Pterodroma leucoptera leucoptera (n = 22), P. leucoptera caledonica (n = 7) and P. pycrofti (n = 12), during their non-breeding season in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean by combining tracking data from geolocator-immersion loggers with remotely sensed environmental data in species distribution models (SDMs), and by comparing feather stable isotope ratios. The 3 taxa showed spatial partitioning: two foraged in the North Equatorial Counter Current and one in the South Equatorial Current. This reflected differences in their realised habitat niches, with significant taxon-specific responses to thermocline depth, sea surface temperature and bathymetry. There were also differences among taxa in activity patterns, and all birds spent a much larger proportion of time in flight at night than during the day, suggesting predominance of nocturnal foraging behaviour. Comparison of stable isotope ratios in feathers suggests that P. l. leucoptera and P. pycrofti mainly consume vertically migrating mesopelagic fishes, whereas the diet of P. l. caledonica also includes some lower trophic levels including crustaceans and squid. Unique insights can be gained from studies of the foraging ecology of tropical pelagic seabirds, in comparison with temperate and polar waters, and are urgently required for understanding and protecting tropical avifauna in key marine habitats

Epidemiology and molecular phylogeny of Babesia sp. in Little Penguins Eudyptula minor in Australia

Blood parasites are potential threats to the health of penguins and to their conservation and management. Little penguins Eudyptula minor are native to Australia and New Zealand, and are susceptible to piroplasmids (Babesia), hemosporidians (Haemoproteus, Leucocytozoon, Plasmodium) and kinetoplastids (Trypanosoma). We studied a total of 263 wild little penguins at 20 sites along the Australian southeastern coast, in addition to 16 captive-bred little penguins. Babesia sp. was identified in seven wild little penguins, with positive individuals recorded in New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania. True prevalence was estimated between 3.4% and 4.5%. Only round forms of the parasite were observed, and gene sequencing confirmed the identity of the parasite and demonstrated it is closely related to Babesia poelea from boobies (Sula spp.) and B. uriae from murres (Uria aalge). None of the Babesia-positive penguins presented signs of disease, confirming earlier suggestions that chronic infections by these parasites are not substantially problematic to otherwise healthy little penguins. We searched also for kinetoplastids, and despite targeted sampling of little penguins near the location where Trypanosoma eudyptulae was originally reported, this parasite was not detected

Pelagic distribution of Gould’s Petrel (Pterodroma leucoptera): linking shipboard and onshore observations with remote-tracking data

This study describes and compares the pelagic distribution and migratory patterns of the two subspecies of Gould’s Petrel (Pterodroma leucoptera), and contrasts data obtained from tracking birds at sea using geolocators with observational data (shipboard sightings, by-catch records and beachcast specimens). While breeding, tracked individuals of both subspecies (P. l. leucoptera and P. l. caledonica) foraged within the Tasman Sea and south of the Australian continent, with forays west into the Indian Ocean before laying. After breeding, both subspecies migrated to distinct non-breeding ranges within the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. Observational data identified the general pattern of migration and foraging areas of the species, whereas data from geolocators provided details of routes and timing of migration, core foraging ranges, and marked spatial and temporal segregation between the two subspecies. However, by attaching geolocators only to established breeders, as is typical of studies of small and medium-sized seabirds, these devices failed to identify that non-breeding birds (pre-breeders and adults that are deferring breeding) may not follow the same migratory schedules or have the same at-sea distribution. We conclude that integrating data from electronic tracking with observational data substantially improves our understanding of the pelagic distribution of seabird populations

Evaluating the Potential Effectiveness of Compensatory Mitigation Strategies for Marine Bycatch

Conservationists are continually seeking new strategies to reverse population declines and safeguard against species extinctions. Here we evaluate the potential efficacy of a recently proposed approach to offset a major anthropogenic threat to many marine vertebrates: incidental bycatch in commercial fisheries operations. This new approach, compensatory mitigation for marine bycatch (CMMB), is conceived as a way to replace or reduce mandated restrictions on fishing activities with compensatory activities (e.g., removal of introduced predators from islands) funded by levies placed on fishers. While efforts are underway to bring CMMB into policy discussions, to date there has not been a detailed evaluation of CMMB's potential as a conservation tool, and in particular, a list of necessary and sufficient criteria that CMMB must meet to be an effective conservation strategy. Here we present a list of criteria to assess CMMB that are tied to critical ecological aspects of the species targeted for conservation, the range of possible mitigation activities, and the multi-species impact of fisheries bycatch. We conclude that, overall, CMMB has little potential for benefit and a substantial potential for harm if implemented to solve most fisheries bycatch problems. In particular, CMMB is likely to be effective only when applied to short-lived and highly-fecund species (not the characteristics of most bycatch-impacted species) and to fisheries that take few non-target species, and especially few non-seabird species (not the characteristics of most fisheries). Thus, CMMB appears to have limited application and should only be implemented after rigorous appraisal on a case-specific basis; otherwise it has the potential to accelerate declines of marine species currently threatened by fisheries bycatch