Wildfire is increasingly accompanied or exacerbated by other disturbance events such as droughts, floods or disease outbreaks. Some ecosystems will be able to buffer these compound incidents; others will shift beyond their historic norm.

Here, we assessed vegetation recovery in the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage area, a region heavily affected in the 2019/20 bushfire season. The severity of these fires captured widespread media attention, but the prior extended drought (~3 years) and subsequent rainfall and flooding events created a far more complex pattern of ecological disturbance.

Vegetation recovery was quantified using the Post-fire Stability Index (PFSI) developed by Gibson et al. (2022). The PFSI represents temporal change in the normalised burn ratio. It assumes that ‘recovered’ vegetation communities will be stable (PFSI values of ~0), whilst disturbed communities will show significant annual variation (PFSI values <-50, >50).

Based on LANDSAT8 images, we calculated PFSI values seasonally from 2015 – 2024; five years pre- and five years post-fire. PFSI was sampled across nine vegetation communities, each of which represented five fire severity classes: unburnt (acting as the control), low, moderate, high and extreme. Soil moisture values at each site were also sampled seasonally, to model the impacts of drought and heavy post-fire rainfall.

To this data, we fit a Bayesian generalised additive mixed model (GAMM). Preliminary results suggest recovery trajectories vary markedly across vegetation communities and fire severity classes. Sites burnt at extreme severity show the largest rates of change (both in the negative and positive direction), with the magnitude of change progressively diminishing as fire severity declines. Additionally, moisture-sensitive ecosystems such as freshwater wetlands appear most at risk from severe fire, particularly under extended drought scenarios. We will discuss these results in detail and their implications for post-fire management in the region.

1.     Preregistration is an open-science practice which aims to improve research transparency and mitigate questionable research practices, like cherry-picking results. It helps protect against cognitive biases, like hindsight bias, that can influence how study outcomes are interpreted. There has been little uptake of preregistration in ecology and conservation, arguably because existing pre-registration templates focus on null-hypothesis significance testing whereas ecology and conservation often rely on different types of statistical modelling.

2.     We argue that preregistration in model-based research in ecology and conservation is both possible and beneficial, using templates adapted for domain-specific methodologies. We applied a user-centred design approach to translate the concept of preregistration into model-based research practice for ecology and conservation.

3.     To better align the internal logic of preregistration with the iterative and non-linear process of ecological modelling, we propose, test and evaluate a methodology for ‘adaptive preregistration’, using a case study of modelling managed water releases (“environmental flows modelling”) in regulated rivers for maintaining riparian vegetation condition in Victoria, Australia.

4.     This research provides a template and methodology for implementing adaptive preregistration of ecological models. Although we focus on ecology and conservation in this paper, the concept of adaptive preregistration, and the templates developed here, could be applied to model-based research in other scientific disciplines within science more broadly. Modelers in ecology and conservation need no longer cry “but I can’t preregister my research.”

Avian communities in Denmark have undergone substantial turnover over the past five decades, with species differing in migratory strategy and ecology showing markedly different trends. Long-distance migrants have declined significantly in their distributions, while insectivorous and granivorous species show similar downward trends in population size. These patterns suggest a specific influence of the environment these species are exposed to, yet the interaction between these ecological traits and the environment remains putative.

In this study, I investigate the processes shaping avian community assembly across Denmark over five decades, using comprehensive bird atlas data from 1971–1974, 1993–1996, and 2014–2017. These datasets provide high-resolution, nationwide coverage of breeding bird distributions at a 5×5 km scale, with consistent survey methodologies through time. I apply a spatiotemporally explicit joint species distribution modelling framework that quantifies the roles of environmental covariates and species characteristics in shaping community composition. Focusing on approximately 200 Danish breeding bird species, I assess how seasonal climate variables and aggregated land-use metrics influence avian communities. I group species by their migratory strategy and dietary habits enabling identification of trait-mediated responses to environmental change.

This approach provides insight into whether specific taxa or ecological types exhibit consistent responses, and to what extent they interact with global change drivers to restructure avian communities. The integration of rich, historical occurrence data, trait information, and robust statistical tools offers an insight into the processes underlying biodiversity change in Denmark and contributes to broader efforts in forecasting and managing biodiversity under global change.

Anthropogenic landscape modification is a recognised driver of biodiversity loss, climate change, and increasingly, zoonotic disease emergence. Habitat destruction in eastern Australia has altered the foraging behaviour of Pteropus species bats, increasing their exposure with domesticated animals and opportunities for interspecies transmission (spillover) of zoonotic pathogens. To improve our understanding of wildlife-domestic animal interactions and their implications for emerging zoonotic pathogens like Hendra virus, we investigated the ecological interface of flying foxes and domestic horses in eastern Australia.
We incorporated longitudinal data on the distribution of domestic horses and flying foxes in southeast Queensland and northeast New South Wales, along with Hendra virus vaccination rates and surveillance efforts in horses. While horse densities and winter-occupancy of flying fox roosts occurred across agricultural, built and forest land covers, our modelling identified key landcover dynamics driving spillover risk, particularly along the agricultural scales. The use of fine-scale ecological datasets improved our ability to identify landscape-level risk factors for Hendra virus spillover and supports the need for reliable and comprehensive ecological datasets to manage broader future threats to our ecosystems and public health.

Australia hosts a diverse and largely endemic orchid flora, with around 10% of species at risk of extinction. Genoplesium (midge orchids) is one of Australia's most threatened orchid genera, containing several critically endangered species. Our current understanding of their pollination systems, including the identity of pollinators and the mechanisms used to attract them, is insufficient for effective conservation. We aimed to unravel the pollination system of Genoplesium insigne, a critically endangered midge orchid species restricted to the NSW Central Coast. First, we observed floral visitors in the field, which suggested tiny Conioscinella flies (Diptera: Chloropidae) as the main visitors and pollinators. Next, to assess whether colour signals help pollinators find G. insigne flowers, we captured spectral images and modelled these in fly vision. Spectral analysis showed that potential fly pollinators are unlikely to distinguish the colour and luminance of G. insigne inflorescences from their natural backgrounds, indicating that the flowers are inconspicuous to tiny flies. Finally, to identify potential volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that might attract pollinators, we examined the odour profile of G. insigne inflorescences using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. The analysis revealed a consistent set of VOCs emitted by the flowers. Notably, one compound (hexyl butyrate) was part of an informative VOC pair and is also found in the defensive secretions of plant bugs (Hemiptera: Miridae). Our findings suggest that midge orchid flowers may mimic the odours of wounded plant bugs, which Conioscinella and other chloropids typically feed on, employing a kleptomyiophilous strategy to lure kleptoparasitic flies for pollination. Further research into the ecology of G. insigne pollinators, including bioassays with hexyl butyrate combined with other identified volatiles, will deepen our understanding of Genoplesium pollination systems and inform the identification of potential sites for translocations and reintroductions to support conservation efforts for G. insigne and other midge orchid species.

Terrestrial plant communities show great variation in their annual rhythms of growth, or seasonal phenology. The geographic patterns resulting from this variation, known as land surface phenology (LSP), contain valuable information for the study of ecosystem function, plant ecophysiology, landscape ecology, and evolutionary biogeography. Yet globally consistent LSP mapping has been hampered by methods that struggle to represent the full range of seasonal phenologies occurring across terrestrial biomes, especially the subtle and complex phenologies of many arid and tropical ecosystems. Using innovative analysis of satellite imagery to map LSP worldwide, we provide unprecedented insight into Earth’s phenological diversity, documenting both intercontinental convergence between similar climates and regional heterogeneity associated with topoclimate, ecohydrology, and vegetation structure. We then map spatial phenological asynchrony and the modes of asynchronous seasonality that control it, identifying hotspots of asynchrony in tropical mountains and Mediterranean climate regions and reporting evidence for the hypothesis that climatically similar sites exhibit greater phenological asynchrony within the tropics. Finally, we find that our global LSP map predicts complex geographic discontinuities in flowering phenology, genetic divergence, and even harvest seasonality across a range of taxa, establishing remote sensing as a crucial tool for understanding the ecological and evolutionary consequences of ‘allochrony by allopatry’.

Studying a cryptic species can be challenging for short study period. I'll go over some of the issues
faced while attempting to study the cryptic Murray-darling carpet python and highlight how to potentially improve our knowledge of the species utilising citizen science.

Maireana sedifolia (Pearl Bluebush) is a dominant shrub across the Australian arid lands. It’s capacity for flowering/fruiting is low and shows remarkable spatiotemporal variation, which poses a significant environmental problem for post-mining revegetation. One such revegetation project is ongoing at Jacinth-Ambrosia, where this research is being conducted. At Jacinth-Ambrosia 200ha of the total 289ha of rehabilitated areas have been left without this dominant species, as the quantity of seeds collected was insufficient. Given the dominance of M. sedifolia, seed is required at a rate of 164g/ha, therefore over 32,800kg of seed would be required to re-establish this species. But, since 2020, only 64kg of seeds has been collected. Previous studies have found that, unlike other arid plants, water is not the main factor limiting M.sedifolia fecundity. Our research investigates whether soil nitrogen deficiency could be the main culprit, and whether nitrogen addition via artificial fertilizers or natural facilitation could be a potential solution. Testing is underway to observe the nitrogen content of plant tissues and soil surrounding flowering and nonflowering plants to identify if a higher soil/plant nitrogen content is correlated to higher flowering rates. Further testing is underway to identify a relationship of facilitation between M.sedifolia and Acacia papryocarpa as well as biological crusts, as both contain nitrogen fixing microorganisms. Finally, experiments are underway in a seed orchard to observe whether the addition of water and nitrogen fertilizer could assist in flowering. Early results demonstrated leaf chlorophyll (a reliable proxy for plant nitrogen content) to be higher in flowering plants than non-flowering plants but soil nitrogen to be lower. In the first three months of fertilizer addition, a 233% increase in flowering plants has been observed. This may suggest that flowering M.sedifolia plants absorb significantly more nitrogen from the surrounding soil and heavily depend on it for reproductive growth.

Conservation has been increasingly drawn into the swirl of interest surrounding gut microbiomes, given their integral link to the health, development, and survival of host species. However, the gut microbiomes of wild individuals are understudied and the ecology behind beneficial community development is largely unknown despite the believed importance to captive management, breeding programs and translocations.
Gut microbiome studies often suffer from insufficient sample replication for traditional analysis, either due to expense or impracticality. This is particularly true of studies investigating the development of gut communities in wild individuals. Which are necessary to gain insight into the successional dynamics of gut colonisation and its drivers. Additionally, microbiomes are highly diverse and variable between individuals, even of the same species. Young microbiomes are often even more so, as the undergo successional changes that are influences not only by the host’s environmental but also the developmental changes of the host themselves. This hyper variation can generate noise in the datasets which often clouds ecological patterns. To unveil these patterns through traditional means of beta diversity, would require replication to a degree that is not practical or indeed not possible in many circumstances, especially in endangered or cryptic species.
This study is the first to investigate the gut microbiome of an endemic Australian species (superb lyrebirds, Menura novaehollandiae) and the first to employ a novel use of zeta diversity to find successional patterns of gut community composition in nestling lyrebirds. Using this novel approach, we found composition increased in similarity with age and pulled apart within and between age variation of gut microbiomes, which would not have been possible using traditional methods. This study offers a method and recommends its use on datasets that might otherwise provide limited inference.

Galaxiid fish are considered one of the most widespread groups of freshwater fish in southern temperate regions and are distributed across a broad range of altitudes. However, Galaxias tantangara, a critically endangered species, is restricted to only two known locations in the mountainous area of Kosciuszko National Park, including Sallys Flat Creek, where it coexists with the more widely distributed G. olidus. There have been limited studies on the diet of G. tantangara, despite its importance for captive breeding and translocation programs. This research aims to investigate the diet of both G. tantangara and G. olidus. Fish were collected using backpack electrofishing, and stomach flushing was performed to obtain stomach contents. Potential prey organisms (macrozoobenthos) from the environment were also collected using a Surber sampler. Visual observation was conducted to identify prey species. Preliminary results indicate that both fish species consume crustaceans (amphipods) and a variety of aquatic and terrestrial insects. Further analysis will be conducted to determine diet composition, as well as dietary preferences and overlap between the two species.