Long-term monitoring by roadkill counts of mammal populations living in intensively cultivated landscapes

Canova, Luca; Balestrieri, Alessandro

doi:10.1007/s10531-018-1638-3

Cited by 29 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 67 publications

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“…Males (particularly in scramble competition systems) often invest more in reproduction at higher relative competitor abundance (Holwell, Allen, Goudie, Duckett, & Painting, 2016; Weladji et al, 2005), but at a price: in our study, males that reproduced early did so at nearly three times the cost to realized lifespan compared with females (Figure 5) and, although the relationship was not significant, siring a cub was negatively associated with paternal survival probability. In addition to risking road traffic mortality (Canova & Balestrieri, 2019; Macdonald et al, 2010) while searching for mates, the costs of elevated testosterone (Fargallo, Martínez‐Padilla, Toledano‐Díaz, Santiago‐Moreno, & Dávila, 2007) have been linked to reduced survival probability in badgers (Buesching et al, 2009). Therefore, our findings emphasize the oft‐ignored role reproductive effort can play in male survival (Bleu, Gamelon, & Sæther, 2016).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What lies beneath? Population dynamics conceal pace‐of‐life and sex ratio variation, with implications for resilience to environmental change

Ross

Newman

Buesching

et al. 2020

Global Change Biology

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Life-history and pace-of-life syndrome theory predict that populations are comprised of individuals exhibiting different reproductive schedules and associated behavioural and physiological traits, optimized to prevailing social and environmental factors. Changing weather and social conditions provide in situ cues altering this life-history optimality; nevertheless, few studies have considered how tactical, sex-specific plasticity over an individual's lifespan varies in wild populations and influences population resilience. We examined the drivers of individual life-history schedules using 31 years of trapping data and 28 years of pedigree for the European badger (Meles meles L.), a long-lived, iteroparous, polygynandrous mammal that exhibits heterochrony in the timing of endocrinological puberty in male cubs. Our top model for the effects of environmental (social and weather) conditions during a badger's first year on pace-of-life explained <10% of variance in the ratio of fertility to age at first reproduction (F/α) and lifetime reproductive success. Conversely, sex ratio (SR)and sex-specific density explained 52.8% (males) and 91.0% (females) of variance in adult F/α ratios relative to the long-term population median F/α. Weather primarily affected the sexes at different life-history stages, with energy constraints limiting the onset of male reproduction but playing a large role in female strategic energy allocation, particularly in relation to ongoing mean temperature increases. Furthermore, the effects of social factors on age of first reproduction and year-to-year reproductive success covaried differently with sex, likely due to sex-specific responses to potential mate availability. For females, low same-sex densities favoured early primiparity; for males, instead, up to 10% of yearlings successfully mated at high same-sex densities.We observed substantial SR dynamism relating to differential mortality of life-history strategists within the population, and propose that shifting ratios of 'fast' and 'slow' life-history strategists contribute substantially to population dynamics and resilience to changing conditions. K E Y W O R D Sdemographic variability, HIREC, individual strategies, life history, pace-of-life syndrome, population resilience

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What lies beneath? Population dynamics conceal pace‐of‐life and sex ratio variation, with implications for resilience to environmental change

Ross

Newman

Buesching

et al. 2020

Global Change Biology

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“…The preinstallation survey sampled only one portion of one year, so the extent to which these data represented the true 'background' level of roadkills, as claimed by the authors, was unknown. Annual, seasonal and lunar variation in roadkill rate is observed around the world (Farmer and Brooks 2012;Steiner et al 2014;Seo et al 2015;Canova and Balestrieri 2019), including Australia (e.g. Coulson 1982Coulson , 1989Taylor and Goldingay 2004).…”

Section: Preinstallation Surveymentioning

confidence: 99%

Roadkill mitigation is paved with good intentions: a critique of Fox et al. (2019)

Coulson

Bender

2020

Aust. Mammalogy

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In a recent publication, Fox et al. (2019) described a three-year trial of a ‘virtual fence’ installed to reduce wildlife roadkills in north-eastern Tasmania. The authors reported a 50% reduction in total roadkills, concluding that the ‘virtual fence’ had the potential to substantially reduce roadkill rates. The field of roadkill mitigation has a long history of promising techniques that are ultimately found wanting, so we evaluated the conceptual basis of the ‘virtual fence’ and the design and analysis of the trial. Of the two stimuli emitted by the ‘virtual fence’, its lights only partly match the sensory capabilities of the target species, its sound frequency is suitable but the intensity is unknown, and both stimuli are artificial and lack biological significance, so will be prone to habituation once novelty wanes. The trial, conducted in three phases, revealed a total of eight methodological flaws ranging from imprecise measurements, confounding effects of treatments, low statistical power, violation of test assumptions and failure to consider habituation. Greater caution is needed in interpreting the findings of this study, and well designed, long-term trials are required to properly assess the ‘virtual fence’.

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“…A higher reported number of roadkill devils in longitudinal data might indicate a species recovery, as other authors have used roadkill as an indicator of population size or density. For example, Baker et al used road traffic casualties (roadkill) to monitor population changes in red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) [ 46 ], Canova and Balestrieri to monitor mammal species [ 47 ] and Gehrt to monitor raccoon abundance [ 48 ]. Similar data could be used to monitor feral cat numbers in Australia.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Australian Roadkill Reporting Project—Applying Integrated Professional Research and Citizen Science to Monitor and Mitigate Roadkill in Australia

Englefield

Starling

Wilson

et al. 2020

Animals

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Australia has no national roadkill monitoring scheme. To address this gap in knowledge, a roadkill reporting application (app) was developed to allow members of the public to join professional researchers in gathering Australian data. The app is used to photograph roadkill and simultaneously records the GPS location, time and date. These data are uploaded immediately to a website for data management. To illustrate the capacity to facilitate cost-effective mitigation measures the article focuses on two roadkill hotspots—in Queensland and Tasmania. In total, 1609 reports were gathered in the first three months of the project. They include data on mammals (n = 1203, 75%), birds (n = 125, 7.8%), reptiles (n = 79, 4.9%), amphibians (n = 4, 0.025%), unidentified (n = 189, 11.8%) and unserviceable ones (n = 9). A significant finding is variance in the distribution of mammals and birds at different times of day. These findings reflect diurnal variation in the activity levels of different species and underline the need for data on a targeted species to be collected at appropriate times of day. By continuing to facilitate roadkill monitoring, it is anticipated that the data generated by the app will directly increase knowledge of roadkill numbers and hotspots. Indirectly, it will provide value-added information on animal behaviour, disease and population dynamics as well as for species distribution mapping.

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Long-term monitoring by roadkill counts of mammal populations living in intensively cultivated landscapes

Cited by 29 publications

References 67 publications

What lies beneath? Population dynamics conceal pace‐of‐life and sex ratio variation, with implications for resilience to environmental change

What lies beneath? Population dynamics conceal pace‐of‐life and sex ratio variation, with implications for resilience to environmental change

Roadkill mitigation is paved with good intentions: a critique of Fox et al. (2019)

The Australian Roadkill Reporting Project—Applying Integrated Professional Research and Citizen Science to Monitor and Mitigate Roadkill in Australia

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