By Meg Martin. Digging marsupials play an especially important ecological role in Australian ecosystems by helping with soil turnover, nutrient mixing, seed dispersal and increasing breakdown of organic materials. Many of these species are highly specialised diggers – with strong forlimbs and long claws. Historically, the interactions between bones and muscle during behaviour has been…
Category: Backyard Bandicoots
Results are in! Highlights from backyard bandicoot spy-cams
By Emily Webster and Janine Kuehs. Many lucky residents of Mandurah and surrounds will have seen or heard about the bandicoot also known as quenda. You might even be proud to share your backyard with a quenda or two. But quenda areimpacted by expanding urban development fragmenting their habitat, and the presence of introduced predators…
Bandicoots in the ‘burbs? St Emilie’s in Canning Vale get a science lesson from Murdoch Researchers
By Janine Kuehs and Natasha Tay. The Backyard Bandicooteers attended something a little different last week! St Emilie’s Primary School science teacher Kerrie Cogger contacted Murdoch University after they discovered little diggings in their school’s bushland. Mrs Cogger, along with her students (who together undertake many activities in the bushland), set up a motion activated…
Real Backyard Bandicoots #1
By Melvyn Tuckey; Greenfields resident, committee member of Peel Preservation Group Inc. and avid nature lover. Early in 2017, Melvyn noticed a new creature visiting his backyard, and so begins the “Story of Bandi”… It was around midnight sometime in late January that I first sighted an unusual creature in my backyard. On this particular…
Backyard bandicoots
By Trish Fleming and Amanda Kristancic. They come in the middle of the night to raid our gardens of fungi, bulbs, and grubs – leaving in their wake characteristic small conical diggings across lawns and flower beds. Sharing our cities with southern brown bandicoots (quenda) is something that Perth and Mandurah residents have come to…
Habitat islands in a sea of urbanisation – Identifying reserves used by quenda
By Gill Bryant. Quenda are fantastic urban adapters, persisting in and around cities and towns across southwest Western Australia (WA). Quenda play an important role as ecosystem engineers by modifying their environment well out of proportion to their body size, where a single quenda can excavate 3.9 tonnes of soil each year digging for their…
