By Shannon Dundas. In the past 50 years, the climate in southwest WA has become hotter and drier [1, 2]. Annual rainfall in the northern jarrah forest has decreased by 17% since the 1970s [3]. In addition to the direct effects, changing climate is having a substantial impact on wildlife species through changes in habitat….
Tag: lizard
The ‘Risky-Decoy’ hypothesis
by Bill Bateman & Trish Fleming. If an ecologist asks you if you are good at modelling you might think that they are referring to something mathematical, and start running in the opposite direction. But a simpler kind of modelling is often used by behavioural ecologists who are interested in predation. If you wanted to…
Autotomy – just drop it and run
by Bill Bateman & Trish Fleming. An organism only has to fail once in escaping a predator for its evolutionary fitness to be reduced to zero. Selection to avoid ending up as a meal is, therefore, intense. More intense than selection on avoiding missing a meal such that in the evolutionary arms race, prey tends…
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