Journal article
Using conservation behavior to manage ecological traps for a threatened freshwater fish
R Hale, R Coleman, M Sievers, TR Brown, SE Swearer
Ecosphere | WILEY | Published : 2018
DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.2381
Abstract
Urban stormwater treatment wetlands are constructed to treat stormwater runoff before it enters waterways, but are often inhabited by animals that can suffer impairments. Such effects will be exacerbated if animals mistakenly prefer sites where their fitness is reduced, and are caught in ecological traps. Traps can compromise the persistence of threatened species in urban landscapes, so assessing how animals respond to stormwater wetlands, and whether their fitness varies between stormwater and natural wetlands, can guide management efforts. We examined the habitat selection behavior of dwarf galaxias (Galaxiella pusilla), a threatened freshwater fish inhabiting wetlands and streams around M..
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Awarded by Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, State Government of Victoria
Funding Acknowledgements
We thank M. Le Feuvre, J. O'Connor, A. Gebler, and J. Shelley for fieldwork assistance, and K. Hassell, S. Long, S. McDonald, and R. Boyle for advice and technical assistance with the liver catalase analyses. The Centre for Aquatic Pollution Identification and Management (V. Pettigrove) kindly provided the data in Appendix S7. We acknowledge funding from the Australian Research Council (LP140100343) and Melbourne Water. This work was completed under permits from the University of Melbourne Animal Ethics committee (1613940), Fisheries Victoria (RP1238), and the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (10007590). We thank two anonymous reviewers for feedback that improved earlier versions of the manuscript.