- Title
- Factors influencing persistence of a threatened amphibian in restored wetlands despite severe population decline during climate change driven weather extremes
- Creator
- Beranek, Chad T.; Sanders, Samantha; Clulow, John; Mahony, Michael
- Relation
- Biodiversity and Conservation Vol. 31, Issue 4, p. 1267-1287
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10531-022-02387-9
- Publisher
- Springer
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2022
- Description
- Biodiversity is in global decline during the Anthropocene. Declines have been caused by multiple factors, such as habitat removal, invasive species, and disease, which are often targets for conservation management. However, conservation interventions are under threat from climate change induced weather extremes. Weather extremes are becoming more frequent and devastating and an example of this was the 2019/2020 Australian drought and mega-fires. We provide a case study the impacts of these extreme weather events had on a population of the threatened frog Litoria aurea that occurs in a constructed habitat which was designed to reduce the impact of introduced fish and chytrid-induced disease. We aimed to determine what factors influenced persistence so that the design of wetlands can be further optimised to future-proof threatened amphibians. We achieved this with 4 years (2016–2020) of intensive capture–recapture surveys during austral spring and summer across nine wetlands (n = 94 repeat surveys). As hypothesized, drought caused a sharp reduction in population size, but persistence was achieved. The most parsimonious predictor of survival was an interaction between maximum air temperature and rainfall, indicating that weather extremes likely caused the decline. Survival was positively correlated with wetland vegetation coverage, positing this is an important feature to target to enhance resilience in wetland restoration programs. Additionally, the benefits obtained from measures to reduce chytrid prevalence were not compromised during drought, as there was a positive correlation between salinity and survival. We emphasize that many species may not be able to persist under worse extreme weather scenarios. Despite the potential for habitat augmentation to buffer effects of extreme weather, global action on climate change is needed to reduce extinction risk.
- Subject
- population persistence; Litoria aurea; Sustainable Development Goals; reproductive ecology; drought; heatwave; wetland vegetation; SDG 6; SDG 13; SDG 14; SDG 15
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1469405
- Identifier
- uon:48232
- Identifier
- ISSN:0960-3115
- Rights
- This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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Collections
Goal 6: Clean Water and Sanitation
Goal 14: Life Below Water
Goal 15: Life on land
Goal 13: Climate Change
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