Our ability to predict species responses to environmental changes relies on accurate records of animal movement patterns. Continental-scale acoustic telemetry networks are increasingly being established worldwide, producing large volumes of information-rich geospatial data. During the last decade, the Integrated Marine Observing System’s Animal Tracking Facility (IMOS ATF) established a permanent array of acoustic receivers around Australia. Simultaneously, IMOS developed a centralised national database to foster collaborative research across the user community and quantify individual behaviour across a broad range of taxa. Here we present the database and quality control procedures developed to collate 49.6 million valid detections from 1891 receiving stations. This dataset consists of detections for 3,777 tags deployed on 117 marine species, with distances travelled ranging from a few to thousands of kilometres. Connectivity between regions was only made possible by the joint contribution of IMOS infrastructure and researcher-funded receivers. This dataset constitutes a valuable resource facilitating meta-analysis of animal movement, distributions, and habitat use, and is important for relating species distribution shifts with environmental covariates.

There have been many individual phytoplankton datasets collected across Australia since the mid 1900s, but most are unavailable to the research community. We have searched archives, contacted researchers, and scanned the primary and grey literature to collate 3,621,847 records of marine phytoplankton species from Australian waters from 1844 to the present. Many of these are small datasets collected for local questions, but combined they provide over 170 years of data on phytoplankton communities in Australian waters. Units and taxonomy have been standardised, obviously erroneous data removed, and all metadata included. We have lodged this dataset with the Australian Ocean Data Network (http://portal.aodn.org.au/) allowing public access. The Australian Phytoplankton Database will be invaluable for global change studies, as it allows analysis of ecological indicators of climate change and eutrophication (e.g., changes in distribution; diatom:dinoflagellate ratios). In addition, the standardised conversion of abundance records to biomass provides modellers with quantifiable data to initialise and validate ecosystem models of lower marine trophic levels.

The ability of viviparous lizards to defer parturition after completion of embryonic development is a potentially key strategy for enhancing offspring fitness. Using the spotted snow skink, Niveoscincus ocellatus , we investigated the ability of females to defer birth if placed into cold conditions at the same time, for 1, 2 or 3 weeks at the end of gestation. The ability to defer birth was compared between two populations at each end of the species' altitudinal range. We hypothesized that females from the high elevation population would be less likely to defer parturition under extended periods of poor conditions, thus ensuring that young were not born too late in the season. In all but the 3week treatment group from the high elevation population, females were able to defer birth when placed under cold conditions: for all groups, there was no treatment effect on offspring phenotype at birth, dispersal distance or survivorship after release. However, there was a significant negative effect of treatment on offspring growth measured after release, with the results differing between the populations. Females from the high elevation population were less able to defer birth under long periods (3 weeks) of cold conditions, and this was accompanied by a decrease in viability of the offspring.

The southern snow skink Niveoscincus microlepidotus is a viviparous alpine lizard with biennial reproduction, in which embryos are fully developed before winter but parturition is delayed until spring. We aimed to determine whether, in this species, in vitro uterine preparations are responsive to arginine vasotocin (AVT) and prostaglandin (PGF(2alpha)) in autumn and spring, and whether pre-treatment with the beta-adrenergic agonist isoproterenol decreases the effectiveness of AVT in stimulating uterine contractions. Using the spotted snow skink (Niveoscincus ocellatus), an annually breeding species, we aimed to determine influences of temperature and the beta-adrenergic system upon the response to AVT in vivo. In both N. microlepidotus and N. ocellatus females are more responsive to AVT than to PGF(2alpha), and that the response to AVT is decreased, but not prevented, by beta-adrenergic stimulation. In N. microlepidotus, uteri are equally responsive in both seasons to the hormones administered. In N. ocellatus environmental conditions, specifically, temperature, modulate the response to AVT in vivo with the time to parturition increasing as temperature decreases. We conclude that in these viviparous squamates the endocrine cascade leading to parturition is modulated by the beta-adrenergic system, and that this may reflect the mechanism by which the timing of parturition is tied to suitable environmental conditions.