An innovative new method developed by a Monash University-led research team aims to help conservationists identify more targeted and effective ways to protect wildlife and ecosystems.
With climate change forcing more wildlife from their traditional habitats, conservationists are facing a growing challenge to mitigate resulting impacts on their new settling locations and the species already residing there.
The Monash-led research has developed a model to help conservationists proactively address adverse impacts by providing a framework to predict how species will respond to the changing climate and how they might interact with other wildlife in their new habitats.
This includes assessing the suitability of environmental conditions for the new arrivals and whether they find their preferred food sources to predict if a species will be able to establish itself.
Similarly, it might also be used to predict the spread of an invasive species in the new ecosystem and its impact on the populations of other species, which would then allow conservationists to proactively address these adverse impacts.
Lead researcher and Senior Research Fellow at Monash School of Biological Sciences and Securing Antarctica's Environmental Future, Dr Matthias Dehling, said the model aims to overcome a major obstacle in conservation: the lack of data for many species, especially on their interactions with other species.
"The model addresses that problem by borrowing data and observations from similar species to model where a species will occur and with which species they will interact," Dr Dehling said.
"We can use the data and known observations of other species to model the potential interactions and habitat preferences of a species for which there are no or only few observations available, simply based on the similarity in their morphology or how closely related they are.
"This is a major advantage because it allows for the modelling of interactions in species communities where a new species may come in, either because of range shifts or accidental dispersion by humans, for which usually no data on interactions with other species or the ecosystem exist.
"This could be applied to cases where we have an endangered species bred in captivity that we want to introduce back into the wild, or a population of an endangered species that we want to translocate to a new site, but also to cases of ecosystems and endangered species that we need to protect from the impact of invasive species."
Until now, separate methods were used to model the interaction between species and the environment (Grinnellian niche) or between various species (Eltonian niche).
The new model brings together both types of data to provide a holistic view and consider the impact of various factors at once.
It provides a framework to predict interactions and responses to climate, using information on specific biological traits of animals, like their size or their beak shape.
Dr Dehling and his colleagues refined the model on a study of fruit-eating birds and fleshy-fruited plants in a Peruvian rainforest, and they will use their findings and modelling to support projects in Aotearoa New Zealand and potentially Antarctica this year.
"For example, in the case of species translocations, knowledge of species' resource requirements and their interactions with other species might be used to select suitable sites where species are released," he said.
"We hope that this model will be useful for conservationists and help them in the critical work they do."
The Monash University-led model has been developed in partnership with researchers from the University of Canterbury and Bioprotection Aotearoa in Aotearoa/New Zealand, and Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries in Germany.
Read the full research paper online at https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.70120
