Spore Retention Experiment with Swamp Wallabies

kvernes — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 10:34:17 +0000

We 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!

Camera trap survey

kvernes — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 23:37:37 +0000

We recently placed a camera trap at a hole under a fence that wildlife use as an access point for a shelter belt of trees near the Newholme Homestead. We were wanting to see if swamp wallabies were moving away from the forest on the mountain, and out into the pastures, and using the shelter belts. Here are some of the results of the 8-day survey.

swamp wallaby - our target species, captured on the first night

We photographed several eastern grey kangaroos - the most common macropod species at Newholme

Another eastern grey kangaroo

Another common species on Newholme, the echidna, wandered through the fence on on night

The red fox, a common introduced species, was photographed on a number of occasions.

Another fox

The uniquitous rabbit, another introduced species commonly found on Newholme

Wildlife Research at the Newholme Field Laboratory

Spore Retention Experiment with Swamp Wallabies

Camera trap survey