problem solving workshop 1 (lecture 12)

Question 1

• Australian outback
• road-side corpse of a small mammal
• considered extinct for 100 years
• last recorded 500km away in similar habitat

What information is need to determine its status & threats, and how do you collect this?

• what is known/can be inferred?

Answer 1

What is known or can be inferred?

• recorded at 2 locations (may be extinct in one)
• probably a habitat specialist (found previously in a similar habitat)
• probably localised/small population (people didn’t know they were there)
• probably killed by vehicle collision (road side)
• in Australia – massive habitat loss &
  fragmentation, lots of introduced predators &
  competing grazers

Question 2

• Australian outback
• road-side corpse of a small mammal
• considered extinct for 100 years
• last recorded 500km away in similar habitat

What information is need to determine its status & threats, and how do you collect this?

• what needs to be known?

Answer 2

• distribution & population size & habitat selection
• is it suffering from habitat loss or fragmentation?
• is it suffering from competition with non-natives?
• is it predated by non-natives?
• are roads a major problem?
• is it suffering from small population size?

Question 3

• Australian outback
• road-side corpse of a small mammal
• considered extinct for 100 years
• last recorded 500km away in similar habitat

What information is need to determine its status & threats, and how do you collect this?

• how can this information be collected?

Answer 3

distribution, population size & habitat selection
- can be worked out via random stratified survey

habitat loss or fragmentation
- compare population densities and young:adult ratios in patches of different sizes

competition with non-natives/predation by non-natives

• compare areas with & without non-natives
• may have to be artificially created

are roads a major problem
- compare close to roads with those further from roads

small population size
- measure genetic diversity in found corpse, compare with similar species or museum specimen