Spore Retention Experiment with Swamp Wallabies
Monday, June 8th, 2009We have started a new experiment at Newholme - PhD student Melissa Danks will be trying to determine the time it takes for truffle spores to move through the digestive system of the swamp wallaby - from consumption, to defecation. Melissa has two wild-caught swamp wallabies captive in pens at Newholme that she will feed locally collected truffles, and then will collect faecal pellets from within the pens at regular intervals. Melissa has the remote camera trained on the food trays - right now she is trying to get the wallabies onto the food. Once the animals are feeding, she will introduce truffles (or truffle spores carried on a familar food item, such as a ball of peanut butter) - the camera will then allow her to mark the exact time that truffles were consumed (which will mark the start of the experiment). I will send an update later on the outcomes of this experiment…
Melissa with one of her wallaby traps, used to capture swamp wallabies at Newholme.
The swamp wallaby in the top pen has not yet fed on the food on offer - but the black rats and possums have happily done so!
But in the bottom pen - success - the wallaby is feeding… but not enough yet to introduce the truffles and be sure they are taken up…
11/6/09 - Update
The wallabies were not taking the feed, so we re-trapped them, and dosed them orally with a spore mixture, via a syringe. We will now collect scats every 4 hours to look at the passage rates of spores through the wallaby digestive system - the experiment has begun!
