An assessment of the accuracy and reliability of hair identification of south-east Australian mammals

2001 ◽  
Vol 28 (6) ◽  
pp. 637 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bertram Lobert ◽  
Lindy Lumsden ◽  
Hans Brunner ◽  
Barbara Triggs
Keyword(s):  
Personal Experience ◽  
Mammal Species ◽  
Blind Test ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Diagnostic Characteristics ◽  
Hair Samples ◽  
Eastern Australia ◽  
Hair Identification ◽  
Specific Variation ◽  
Derived Data

The aim of this experiment was to quantify the accuracy and reliability of identifying mammals from hair samples, using two highly skilled practitioners. Hair samples were collected from 37 mammal species occurring in south-eastern Australia. This material was divided into 252 samples, which were then used in a blind test to determine the accuracy of the technique. The taxa were then grouped into reliability categories based on the accuracy and consistency of the practitioner’s identifications. In all, 23 taxa, including 19 species, were regarded as being reliably identified from hair analysis. Identification of the remaining 18 species involved at least some level of error. Several factors influenced the accuracy of identifications in this study, principally (1) the need to identify samples to species level wherever possible, rather than not making an identification, and (2) the diverse range of species used (from across Victoria) and the lack of collection locality. Target species have been grouped into reliability categories, as a guide to aid evaluation of field-derived data. We emphasise the need for practitioners to gain considerable personal experience of the technique, the diagnostic characteristics used to identify hair of different species and intra-specific variation, in order to maximise the reliability of identification results.

Influence of rainfall on population dynamics and survival of a threatened rodent (Pseudomys novaehollandiae) under a drying climate in coastal woodlands of south-eastern Australia

2017 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mandy Lock ◽  
Barbara A. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Population Dynamics ◽  
Population Decline ◽  
Resource Depletion ◽  
Mammal Species ◽  
Eastern Australia ◽  
Apparent Decrease ◽  
Mediterranean Systems ◽  
Precipitous Decline ◽  
Breeding Seasons ◽  
Successional Vegetation

In Mediterranean systems, such as south-east Australia, predictions of climate change including lower rainfall and extended drought, threaten vulnerable mammal species. We investigated the relationship between rainfall and population dynamics for a native rodent at risk of extinction, the New Holland mouse (Pseudomys novaehollandiae). In the eastern Otways, the species was significantly influenced by rainfall, exhibiting a population irruption (15–20 individuals ha–1) following six years of above-average rainfall and a precipitous decline to site extinction during subsequent drought. The decline was predominantly related to loss of adults before and during breeding seasons, together with an apparent decrease in juvenile survival. Population abundance was positively correlated with a rainfall lag of 0–9 months. We propose that the response of this omnivore to high rainfall was mediated through increased productivity and that rainfall decline resulted in resource depletion and population decline. Under a drying climate the direct impacts of rainfall decline will continue. However management of other threats may increase the species’ resilience. Burning to provide optimal successional vegetation, protection of refugia, and predator control are priorities. However, burning should be avoided during drought, as the likelihood of local extinctions is substantial.

Adaptive Coexistence? Lord Farnham (1879–1957) and Southern Loyalism in Pre- and Post-Independence Ireland

2020 ◽  
pp. 293-314
Author(s):  
Jonathan Cherry
Keyword(s):  
Personal Experience ◽  
Free State ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Agricultural Improvement ◽  
Personal Connections ◽  
Irish Free State ◽  
The Government

This chapter traces the career and experiences of Arthur Kenlis Maxwell, 11th Baron Farnham (1879-1957) of county Cavan as a southern loyalist in pre and post-independent Ireland. Up to 1920 he was a prominent representative of southern unionism and his impassioned speeches during the debate on the Government of Ireland bill convey the sense of abandonment and betrayal felt by many southern loyalists. In April 1922 he and his family left Farnham House for England. Unlike many of his peers who made similar journeys, Farnham returned to his ancestral home in 1926 and enjoyed a relatively peaceful and easy transition back into life there. The latter part of the chapter illustrates Farnham’s personal experience of adaptive coexistence and the complexity of southern unionist identities and loyalties in this ‘new’ Ireland. Personal connections made prior to his departure, his interest in agricultural improvement and promotion of various sports in Cavan had meant that he had cultivated a wide and diverse range of friends and networks which he could tap into on return. Although he never formally entered politics in the Irish Free State, Farnham remained an important leadership figure within the Protestant community in Cavan and further afield and symbolically maintained displays of his loyalism attending both the 1937 and 1953 coronations in London.

Triaina, a new genus in the Janirellidae Menzies, 1956 (Crustacea: Isopoda: Asellota), with two new species from south-eastern Australia, and a new diagnosis for the family

Zootaxa ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 1980 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
JEAN JUST
Keyword(s):  
New Species ◽  
New Genus ◽  
Depth Range ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
South Eastern ◽  
Eastern Australia ◽  
The Family ◽  
Two New Species ◽  
New Diagnosis ◽  
South Eastern Australia

The varying concepts of Janirellidae Menzies, 1956 are outlined, including its rejection by several authors. The view of Wilson and Wägele of Janirellidae being a valid family comprising Janirella Bonnier, 1896 and presumably Dactylostylis Richardson, 1911 (= Spinianirella Menzies, 1962) is accepted. Diagnoses of the Janirellidae subsequent to Menzies’ original one were based on the inclusion of a diverse range of genera now recognised as not belonging in that family. A new diagnosis of Janirellidae is presented based on the inclusion of Janirella, Dactylostylis, and a new genus Triaina with two new species, T. isodonte and T. makridonte, from south-eastern Australia. The latter species represents the shallowest record (80 m) of the otherwise predominantly deep-water family. All species in the family are listed in an appendix, with area of type locality and depth range.

Novel soil lineages ofArchaeaare present in semi-arid soils of eastern Australia

2007 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J Midgley ◽  
Jennifer A Saleeba ◽  
Michael I Stewart ◽  
Peter A McGee
Keyword(s):  
Restriction Analysis ◽  
Archaeal Community ◽  
Rdna Sequencing ◽  
Eastern Australia ◽  
Dna Restriction ◽  
Semi Arid Region ◽  
Agricultural Site ◽  
Derived Data ◽  
Archaeal Communities ◽  
Semi Arid

The diversity of Archaea was studied in vertisolic and loam soils of a semi-arid region in Australia. Sampling was undertaken at an agricultural site, two grassland environments, and a brigalow (Acacia harpophylla) woodland. Archaeal community structure was profiled using amplified ribosomal DNA restriction analysis (ARDRA) combined with rDNA sequencing of an example of each restriction fragment length polymorphism type. Sequence comparison and phylogenetic analysis demonstrated that both crenarchaeotal and euryarchaeotal Archaea were present at oxic depths in the soil at all field sites. Along with previously described soil archaeal lineages, novel soil lineages and the deeply divergent Pendant-33 group of Euryarchaeota were also detected. A novel statistical method for comparing ARDRA derived data was demonstrated and implemented using the archaeal communities from the four field sites. Archaeal diversity, as measured by this method, was significantly higher in the agricultural site than at either of the grassland sites or the brigalow woodland.Key words: archaeal communities, cotton, Euryarchaeota, Crenarchaeota, soil.

scholarly journals In situnovel environment assay reveals acoustic exploration as a repeatable behavioral response in migratory bats

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theresa Schabacker ◽  
Oliver Lindecke ◽  
Sofia Rizzi ◽  
Lara Marggraf ◽  
Gunārs Pētersons ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Behavioral Response ◽  
Mammal Species ◽  
Echolocation Call ◽  
Spatial Activity ◽  
Novel Environment ◽  
Exploration Behavior ◽  
Specific Variation ◽  
Species Specific

AbstractIntegrating information on species-specific sensory perception together with spatial activity provides a high-resolution understanding of how animals explore environments, yet frequently used exploration assays commonly ignore sensory acquisition as a measure for exploration. Echolocation is an active sensing system used by hundreds of mammal species, primarily bats. As echolocation call activity can be reliably quantified, bats present an excellent animal model to investigate intra-specific variation in environmental cue sampling. Here, we developed anin situroost-like novel environment assay for tree-cave roosting bats. We repeatedly tested 52 individuals of the migratory bat species,Pipistrellus nathusii, across 24 hours, to examine the role of echolocation when crawling through a maze-type arena and test for consistent intra-specific variation in sensory-based exploration. We reveal a strong correlation between echolocation call activity and spatial activity. Moreover, we show that during the exploration of the maze, individuals consistently differed in spatial activity as well as echolocation call activity given their spatial activity, a behavioral response we term ‘acoustic exploration’. Acoustic exploration was correlated with other exploratory behaviors, but not with emergence latency. We here present a relevant new measure for exploration behavior and provide evidence for consistent (short-term) intra-specific variation in the level at which wild bats collect information from a novel environment.

scholarly journals A Convolutional Neural Network for Automated Detection of Humpback Whale Song in a Diverse, Long-Term Passive Acoustic Dataset

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann N. Allen ◽  
Matt Harvey ◽  
Lauren Harrell ◽  
Aren Jansen ◽  
Karlina P. Merkens ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Neural Network ◽  
Convolutional Neural Network ◽  
Characteristic Curve ◽  
Humpback Whale ◽  
Learning Approaches ◽  
Spatial And Temporal Patterns ◽  
Mammal Species ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Acoustic Data ◽  
Passive Acoustic

Passive acoustic monitoring is a well-established tool for researching the occurrence, movements, and ecology of a wide variety of marine mammal species. Advances in hardware and data collection have exponentially increased the volumes of passive acoustic data collected, such that discoveries are now limited by the time required to analyze rather than collect the data. In order to address this limitation, we trained a deep convolutional neural network (CNN) to identify humpback whale song in over 187,000 h of acoustic data collected at 13 different monitoring sites in the North Pacific over a 14-year period. The model successfully detected 75 s audio segments containing humpback song with an average precision of 0.97 and average area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC-ROC) of 0.992. The model output was used to analyze spatial and temporal patterns of humpback song, corroborating known seasonal patterns in the Hawaiian and Mariana Islands, including occurrence at remote monitoring sites beyond well-studied aggregations, as well as novel discovery of humpback whale song at Kingman Reef, at 5∘ North latitude. This study demonstrates the ability of a CNN trained on a small dataset to generalize well to a highly variable signal type across a diverse range of recording and noise conditions. We demonstrate the utility of active learning approaches for creating high-quality models in specialized domains where annotations are rare. These results validate the feasibility of applying deep learning models to identify highly variable signals across broad spatial and temporal scales, enabling new discoveries through combining large datasets with cutting edge tools.

Description of capillariid nematodes (Trichinelloidea: Capillariidae) parasitic in Australian marsupials and rodents

Zootaxa ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 1348 (1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID M. SPRATT
Keyword(s):  
Molecular Evidence ◽  
Epithelial Tissue ◽  
Additional Species ◽  
New Host ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Nasal Sinus ◽  
Southeastern Australia ◽  
Eastern Australia ◽  
The Family ◽  
Murid Rodents

Capillariid nematodes (Trichinelloidea: Capillariidae) parasitic in Australian dasyurid, peramelid and potoroid marsupials and murid rodents are described. Diagnosis of the genus Eucoleus and a key to species are given. Two species are redescribed: E. gastricus (Baylis) and E. rickardi (Beveridge and Barker), comb. nov. Nine species are described as new: E. breviductus sp. nov., E. buckenbourensis sp. nov., E. fluvidus sp. nov., E. longiductus sp. nov., E. parvulus sp. nov., E. perplexus sp. nov., E. plumosus sp. nov., E. posterus sp. nov. and E. pseudoplumosus sp. nov. Three additional species are recognized but not named. Species of Eucoleus occur in a diverse range of epithelial tissue habitats in Australian hosts throughout eastern Australia; one species is known from peramelids in Western Australia. Members of the genus have not been found in any other families of Australian marsupials. Three species are parasites of dasyurids, eight species are parasites of peramelids, two species occur in both dasyurid and peramelid hosts and two species are parasites of murid rodents. Morphologically, species of Eucoleus appear to be reasonably host specific at the family level. Molecular evidence indicates that sibling species of Eucoleus occur in distinct but closely related host species. Baruscapillaria conspecta sp. nov. is described from murid rodents and the potoroid marsupial rufous rat kangaroo, Aepyprymnus rufescens, primarily in north Queensland. Capillaria ornamentata sp. nov. is described from the distal nasal sinus behind the orbit of the eye of species of dasyurids of the genus Antechinus in southeastern Australia. Aonchotheca praeputialis (Obendorf, 1979) comb. nov. is redescribed and appears to occur exclusively in the native Rattus fuscipes. New host and geographic records, and tissue localities of the trichurid nematode, Anatrichosoma haycocki (Trichinelloidea: Trichuridae, Trichosomoidinae) are given.

Persistence and productivity of Medicago sativa subspecies sativa, caerulea, falcata and varia accessions at three intermittently dry sites in south-eastern Australia

2010 ◽  
Vol 61 (8) ◽  
pp. 645 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. D. Li ◽  
Z. N. Nie ◽  
S. P. Boschma ◽  
B. S. Dear ◽  
G. M. Lodge ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Medicago Sativa ◽  
Total Yield ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
South Eastern ◽  
The North ◽  
Drought Tolerant ◽  
Eastern Australia ◽  
Grazing Systems ◽  
Perennial Legume ◽  
South Eastern Australia

The persistence and productivity of a diverse range of Medicago sativa germplasm including representatives of subspecies sativa, caerulea, falcata and varia were examined at 3 field sites in south-eastern Australia over 4 years. Sites were located at Tamworth, Barmedman and Hamilton, forming a 1200 km north–south transect with rainfall distribution varying from predominantly summer dominant in the north to winter dominant at the most southerly site. Several entries of subspecies varia and caerulea had herbage yields and persistence equivalent to that of M. sativa subspecies sativa cultivar Sceptre, a highly winter-active type that was used as a standard. The cultivar Cancreep, a cross of M. falcata and M. sativa, had a total yield over 3 years equivalent to 84–91% of Sceptre at the 2 sites where it was sown. Individual lines of subspecies varia demonstrated good persistence under grazing and were ranked 2nd and 6th out of 35 accessions for frequency in year 4 at Barmedman, the driest site, and 5th, 7th and 9th out of 33 accessions at Tamworth, the more summer-dominant rainfall site. Entries of subspecies falcata were among the least productive and persistent. The study indicated that germplasm from subspecies caerulea and varia offered hitherto unexploited potential for selection as persistent and drought-tolerant perennial legume alternatives to M. sativa for extensive low management grazing systems of south-eastern Australia.

scholarly journals An exploratory study of early career teachers as culturally responsive teachers

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denise Ann Beutel ◽  
Donna Tangen ◽  
Rebecca Spooner-Lane
Keyword(s):  
Beginning Teachers ◽  
Exploratory Study ◽  
Culturally Responsive ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Individual Growth ◽  
Early Career Teachers ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Eastern Australia ◽  
Career Teachers

The purpose of this study was to advance understanding on how early career teachers imagined themselves to be culturally responsive and how their beliefs and ideologies about teaching a diverse range of learners were challenged and refined during their early years of teaching. This qualitative, exploratory study was conducted in a large, secondary school in eastern Australia that has a highly diverse population of students. Findings indicate that, while these early career teachers lacked preparation for working with diverse learners,  building relationships on multiple levels (with students, with fellow beginning teachers, and with senior staff which includes ongoing support and mentoring from colleagues) is essential for the development of early career teachers as culturally responsive practitioners. Findings are discussed in relation to Garmon’s (2005) six key factors for teaching diverse groups of students: openness, self-awareness, commitment to social justice, having intercultural experiences, have support group experiences, and recognising individual growth.  These findings have implications for schooling systems in how they can better transition early career teachers to classrooms and for higher education teacher preparation programs in Australia and many other countries with a growing number migrant and refugee students coming into the school system.

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