With ongoing introductions into Australia since the 1700s, the European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) has become one of the most widely distributed and abundant vertebrate pests, adversely impacting Australia's biodiversity and agroeconomy. To understand the population and range dynamics of the species and its impacts better, occurrence and abundance data have been collected by researchers and citizens from sites covering a broad spectrum of climatic and environmental conditions in Australia. The lack of a common and accessible repository for these data has, however, limited their use in determining important spatiotemporal drivers of the structure and dynamics of the geographical range of rabbits in Australia. To meet this need, we created the Australian National Rabbit Database, which combines more than 50 yr of historical and contemporary survey data collected from throughout the range of the species in Australia. The survey data, obtained from a suite of complementary monitoring methods, were combined with high‐resolution weather, climate, and environmental information, and an assessment of data quality. The database provides records of rabbit occurrence (689,265 records) and abundance (51,241 records, >120 distinct sites) suitable for identifying the spatiotemporal drivers of the rabbit's distribution and for determining spatial patterns of variation in its key life‐history traits, including maximum rates of population growth. Because all data are georeferenced and date stamped, they can be coupled with information from other databases and spatial layers to explore the potential effects of rabbit occurrence and abundance on Australia's native wildlife and agricultural production. The Australian National Rabbit Database is an important tool for understanding and managing the European rabbit in its invasive range and its effects on native biodiversity and agricultural production. It also provides a valuable resource for addressing questions related to the biology, success, and impacts of invasive species more generally. No copyright or proprietary restrictions are associated with the use of this data set other than citation of this Data Paper.
Illegal wildlife trade is a lucrative business, which is driving many species towards extinction. Pangolins (Manis spp.) and arapaimas (Arapaima spp.) are two CITES listed genera coveted in the leather fashion industry for their unique skin pattern.The US has contributed to the decline of pangolin species and was historically a large market for pangolin leather products. While the US trade in pangolin products has declined since 2000, we suspect that pangolin leather may now be substituted by arapaima products. Arapaima leather trade has increased significantly since the year 2011. We found a strong positive correlation between the US states trading in both arapaima and pangolin leather products. The US states that were most involved in this trade had a lower population density and were comparatively wealthier than others. Leather items of both arapaima and pangolin were found for sale on eBay, with 75% of incidents in breach of eBay policy, and potentially illegal. Pangolin leather products were also falsely advertised as arapaima products.We conclude that arapaima leather is increasingly used to satisfy the persisting demand for exotic leather, and further research is urgently needed to determine the effect of the trade on wild arapaima populations.
Despite decades of extensive animal movement research, we still lack an integrated, process-based understanding behind the movement decisions that individuals make, which ultimately lead to the emergence of home-ranges. Here, we advance toward a more holistic understanding of HR formation, by developing a theoretical model integrating two key processes that have been separately proposed to play important roles in HR formation in territorial animals: (i) optimising resource acquisition by referencing a cognitive memory (i.e., resource memory); and (ii) minimising resource competition through defensive cues (i.e., territoriality). We extend a two-state memory-based model for non-territorial animals to include multiple individuals that interact through scent-mediated conspecific avoidance behaviour. We investigated how the interplay of memory and territoriality influenced: (1) the emergence of individual home-ranges; (2) the relationship between home-range size, density and resource availability; and (3) the response of animal home ranges to perturbations of the conspecific environment (i.e., removing individuals). We showed that integrating both resource memory and territoriality gave rise to spatially distinct and dynamic HRs that follow a negative log-linear relationship with respect to resource distribution (Pearson's r = -0.73, p < 0.01), congruent with empirical evidence. On its own, neither process resulted in a similar response.
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