I’ve used some of these photos in previous posts (here and here), but now I need to post an update. This little dragon is now known as the Monaro grassland earless dragon. I’m excited to be a co-author on the paper, published last week in Royal Society Open Science (open access), that describes this species….
Tag: Conservation
What We Read- Favorite Papers of 2018
Anna I’ve selected three favourite papers from 2018: a research study, a think piece and a technical review. I was really excited to read “Digging mammals contribute to rhizosphere fungal community composition and seedling growth” (subscription) because I’m interested in how conservation management actions – in this case conservation and potential reintroduction of digging mammals…
Conservation in action: videos and teaching resources
I’m a fan of celebrating conservation success stories and sharing conservation optimism. In fact I’ve written about this before. Today, I want to share some wonderful teaching resources, that also highlight some reasons for hope in wildlife conservation. A little while back, I asked twitter to recommend short videos about mammal conservation in Australia, to…
What We’re Reading- June 8, 2018
Stakeholders Diverse Interests in Endangered Vulture Conservation The Egyptian vulture (Neophron percnopterus) is an endangered bird native across northern Africa, the Middle East, and as far east as the Indian subcontinent. Researchers asked diverse stakeholders including hunters, ranchers, and tourists in northern Spain (the upper range of the vulture’s distribution) about their knowledge of the species…
Rhino Conservation: Dehorning Demand
There are five living species of rhinoceros: black (Diceros bicornis), white (Ceratotherium simum), Javan (Rhinoceros sondaicus), Indian (Rhinoceros unicornis), and Sumatran (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) rhinos. And not too long ago there was a woolly rhino (Coelodonta antiquitatis) that roamed northern Eurasia until it went extinct ~14,000 years ago. The IUCN lists black, Javan, and Sumatran rhinos as…
How the sugar glider got to Tasmania and why this is bad news for difficult birds
When is a native species also invasive, and how can we tell? This may seem a strange question, but it highlights the difficulty we sometimes face determining the boundaries of the area in which a species naturally occurs. Especially when detection is imperfect and those boundaries may change over time. Animals move. Plants move. Sometimes…
What We’re Reading – Jan 26, 2018
Temporal Genotyping for Conservation Monitoring This paper advocates using museum specimens to quantify recent losses of genetic diversity in species of conservation concern. The authors note that older demographic processes leave a signature on genetic diversity that can be difficult to distinguish from recent changes. Thus they show how using temporal sampling allows researchers to…
What We’re Reading- Jan 12, 2018
One shark, one global population? We recently highlighted the lack of population genetic studies within marine environments, and noted that the existing ones show exciting results about both barriers and corridors for dispersal. A new paper (open) investigated the global population structure of the blue shark (Prionace glauca). This species has a serious global oceanic…
What We’re Reading- Jan 5, 2018
Happy New Year from the WildlifeSNPits team! All the Pretty Birds This open paper investigated the phylogenetic and biogeographic relationships between Kingfishers, an order of birds with 114 species. Kingfishers are known for their beautiful bright colors, but how the different species are related to each other was partially unknown. The authors inferred that kingfishers…
What We Read- Favorite Papers of 2017
Anna My favourite paper of 2017 was “Devil Tools & Tech: A Synergy of Conservation Research and Management Practice” (open access). This provides a great example of how to effectively bridge the “research-implementation gap” in conservation management. Instead of what could be called the “traditional model”, where scientists conduct and publish research, and only then engage…
Interpreting the Biodiversity of Your Wardrobe
I love fashion, especially garments with animals on them. I wear so many of them, that my boss asked me about the biodiversity of my closet. I was genuinely curious so I counted all the plants, animals, and any other life forms that I could spot and calculated the Shannon Weiner Index, a real index…
What We’re Reading- Nov 3, 2017
Fight During Over-head Flight: Bear Physiological Responses to Drones The drone landscape is rapidly changing as more businesses incorporate drones and attention from hobbyists increases. Drones have also been proposed as a conservation monitoring tool, both for counting elusive species and for surveying/deterring poachers. A group of researchers wanted to know how animals respond when…
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