By Natasha Tay. On 3rd March 1973 at the meeting of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), representatives of 80 countries agreed to protect animals and plants from being excessively and unsustainably traded and exploited. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) was thus created…
Tag: Urban biology
Foxes in the city
By Bill Bateman & Trish Fleming. Of all the species described as ‘urban adapters’, it is perhaps the red fox (Vulpes vulpes) that is most well-known. In Europe, foxes seem to have been hanging around towns and cities for centuries – certainly urban foxes were recorded around London in the 1800s [1]. Today, the red…
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…
High density housing: Termite mounds are more than just lumps of dirt
By Trish Fleming. Termites are amazing ecosystem engineers – they create massive changes in ecosystems that are far out of proportion to their size. A recent paper by Thompson and Thompson (2015; Pacific Conservation Biology) has captured how important termite mounds are for the Australian landscape. At their study site in the Pilbara region of Western…
Death on the road
Bill Bateman & Lauren Gilson. Perhaps the most fundamental impact we can have on wildlife is killing it. We can be very opinionated on the rights and wrongs of killing animals; for instance, hunting is a very emotive issue. One cause of death of wildlife that we might not think about that much but which…
Who are you looking at?
by Bill Bateman & Trish Fleming. Animals are constantly on the lookout for potentially dangerous situations. Vigilance (time spent observing their environment for danger) is one measure of their antipredator responses. Another is their ‘flight initiation distance’ (simply: FID = how close you can come to an animal before they take off).
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