• myGriffith
    • Staff portal
    • Contact Us⌄
      • Future student enquiries 1800 677 728
      • Current student enquiries 1800 154 055
      • International enquiries +61 7 3735 6425
      • General enquiries 07 3735 7111
      • Online enquiries
      • Staff phonebook
    View Item 
    •   Home
    • Griffith Research Online
    • Journal articles
    • View Item
    • Home
    • Griffith Research Online
    • Journal articles
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Browse

  • All of Griffith Research Online
    • Communities & Collections
    • Authors
    • By Issue Date
    • Titles
  • This Collection
    • Authors
    • By Issue Date
    • Titles
  • Statistics

  • Most Popular Items
  • Statistics by Country
  • Most Popular Authors
  • Support

  • Contact us
  • FAQs
  • Admin login

  • Login
  • The fox and the beach: Coastal landscape topography and urbanisation predict the distribution of carnivores at the edge of the sea

    Thumbnail
    View/Open
    Connolly426840-Published.pdf (1.902Mb)
    File version
    Version of Record (VoR)
    Author(s)
    Kimber, O
    Gilby, BL
    Henderson, CJ
    Olds, AD
    Connolly, RM
    Maslo, B
    Weston, MA
    Rowden, A
    Kelaher, B
    Schlacher, TA
    Griffith University Author(s)
    Connolly, Rod M.
    Year published
    2020
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Abstract
    Mitigating the impact of invasive species is a global conservation challenge, which requires an understanding of the factors that drive the distribution, abundance, and ecological interactions of invaders. Red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) are a widespread and abundant invasive omnivore in Australia. They are common in dunes and coastal areas that abut marine shorelines, which provide abundant food resources in the form of carrion. They are considered a key threatening process to Australia's biodiversity. The global literature posits that foxes use a broad mix of habitats, leading to an expectation of few consistent associations of ...
    View more >
    Mitigating the impact of invasive species is a global conservation challenge, which requires an understanding of the factors that drive the distribution, abundance, and ecological interactions of invaders. Red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) are a widespread and abundant invasive omnivore in Australia. They are common in dunes and coastal areas that abut marine shorelines, which provide abundant food resources in the form of carrion. They are considered a key threatening process to Australia's biodiversity. The global literature posits that foxes use a broad mix of habitats, leading to an expectation of few consistent associations of foxes with landscape attributes and human uses of beaches and coastal dunes – this is the fundamental hypothesis tested here. Fox distribution was comprehensively mapped in Eastern Australia (108 km of shoreline, 192 sites, 6900 h of wildlife camera footage) and related (general additive models) to a range of potential drivers (e.g. topographic features, habitat types, urbanisation, connectivity, dogs, fox removal) on ocean beaches. Notwithstanding the catholic nature of red foxes elsewhere, here we show that habitat use by red foxes along ocean beaches is not indiscriminate: more foxes occur on beaches backed by high dunes and large expanses of natural vegetation. Conversely, significantly fewer foxes occur where natural dune habitats have been lost to urban areas. Fox removal did not affect fox distributions. Foxes are functionally important carnivores in coastal landscapes, and their disjunct distribution demonstrated by us suggests a spatially heterogeneous functional signal in coastal food-webs. More broadly, sandy beach ecosystems, interspersed by urban development, dominate many coasts, offering a rich bio-geographic tapestry to test how models of fox habitat choice articulate into invasive species management and food-web interactions.
    View less >
    Journal Title
    Global Ecology and Conservation
    Volume
    23
    DOI
    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.2020.e01071
    Copyright Statement
    © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
    Subject
    Environmental Sciences
    Environmental Science and Management
    Ecology
    Publication URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/10072/400367
    Collection
    • Journal articles

    Footer

    Disclaimer

    • Privacy policy
    • Copyright matters
    • CRICOS Provider - 00233E

    Tagline

    • Gold Coast
    • Logan
    • Brisbane - Queensland, Australia
    First Peoples of Australia
    • Aboriginal
    • Torres Strait Islander