Australia’s vast and varied landscapes—from arid deserts and tropical savannas to alpine woodlands and temperate forests—offer a globally unique context for landscape ecology. We provide a concise review of how the discipline has developed in Australia, shaped by both ecological theory and practical conservation needs across highly modified and largely intact environments. Key contributions include advances in fire ecology, habitat fragmentation, and spatial modelling, driven by the need to understand biodiversity persistence in dynamic and often disturbed landscapes.

We highlight pivotal case studies where landscape ecology has informed land-use planning, ecological restoration, and biodiversity management, including the integration of Indigenous land management practices and the increasing use of remote sensing and spatial technologies. Attention will also be given to the challenges posed by climate change, invasive species, and expanding urbanisation, which are redefining landscape dynamics and calling for new approaches.

Looking ahead, the talk will outline critical frontiers for Australian landscape ecology: better linking landscape pattern to ecosystem processes, scaling up from local studies to continental syntheses, and embedding social-ecological perspectives to address complex, multi-use landscapes. There is a growing need to strengthen collaborations between researchers, land managers, and policy-makers to ensure landscape ecological insights translate into action.

Landscape ecology in Australia is at a pivotal point—building on strong foundations, but needing to evolve rapidly to meet accelerating environmental and political change. We aims to spark reflection and discussion on where the field should go next and introduce our symposium an its range of speakers from diverse research and practice backgrounds.

Pyrodiversity—the variation in fire regimes over space and time—is increasingly recognised as a key driver of biodiversity, yet empirical evidence linking pyrodiversity to species responses remains limited, especially in fire-prone forest ecosystems. This study develops and applies a novel approach to quantify pyrodiversity by integrating fire severity and frequency data across multiple events in the montane forests of south-eastern Australia. Using principal component analysis, I identified spatially structured ‘fire syndromes’ that characterise complex fire histories across the landscape. I then assessed how these multidimensional fire patterns relate to the distribution of the yellow-bellied glider (Petaurus australis), a vulnerable, arboreal marsupial dependent on mature eucalypt forest.
Results showed that yellow-bellied gliders consistently avoided areas with frequent, high-severity fire, and were more likely to occur in areas characterised by low or moderate severity fire at infrequent intervals. These associations were strongest at fine spatial scales (200 m), aligning with the species’ home range and indicating that localised fire history plays a key role in shaping suitable post-fire habitat. Notably, these relationships were not detected using traditional univariate metrics (e.g., fire frequency or severity alone), highlighting the added value of a multidimensional fire syndrome approach.
This study demonstrates that integrating multiple fire regime components can reveal hidden ecological patterns and scale-dependent responses to pyrodiversity. By moving beyond simple fire metrics, fire syndromes provide a more ecologically meaningful framework for understanding species’ responses to complex fire mosaics. This approach offers practical insights for conservation and land management in fire-prone landscapes, especially under increasing fire activity due to climate change.

Spatial and temporal variation in fires is often used to promote animal diversity. Much work has focused on how these fire-generated mosaics influence species abundance and composition. However, few studies have examined how these patterns affect fundamental processes, such as dispersal, particularly at multiple spatial scales.

We investigated the influence of fire mosaics on the spatial population dynamics of two Australian microbat species: the Chocolate Wattled Bat (Chalinolobus morio) and the Little Forest Bat (Vespadelus vulturnus). While both species are highly mobile aerial predators, they differ in key ecological traits likely to shape their genetic response to fire-driven habitat patterns. Using a multi-scale landscape genetic analysis, we investigate fine-scale genetic structure and individual-based genetic diversity against landscape structure variables representing the extent, configuration, and diversity of the fire mosaic.

Genetic structure and connectivity were influenced by the fire mosaic for both species across similar scales, but in contrasting directions. Our results suggest that fire-mediated differences in habitat suitability can inhibit connectivity among individuals and thereby influence the distribution of genetic diversity. Importantly, the scale and the direction of the responses highlight the different ecological requirements of the species, providing a framework for understanding the links between post-fire habitat succession and the genetic response of species in fire-managed landscapes.

The long-footed potoroo (LFP, Potorous longipes) is an endangered marsupial endemic to south-eastern Australia. It is globally significant for its specialised diet, consuming truffle-like ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi as vast majority of its food intake. By dispersing truffle-like ECM fungal spores, LFPs play a vital role promoting ECM symbioses with native trees such as Eucalyptus and therefore in supporting forest health. However, the spatial, temporal, and individual-level variability of the LFP’s truffle-like ECM fungal diet remain poorly understood, posing significant challenges to understanding the food resource requirements of this endangered marsupial, particularly under a changing climate that may influence fungal resource availability. To investigate these questions, we used DNA metabarcoding of a unique 23-year dataset of LFP scats collected across their two remaining populations. While the truffle-like ECM fungal communities consumed by the LFP differs between regions and sites, season was the dominant factor in explaining dietary variation. At a local scale, fungal communities in LFP diets also differed significantly between sex and body mass of LFPs, reflecting possible differences in foraging behaviour, nutritional requirements and home range. These findings illustrate that multi-scale processes, from fine-scale individual foraging behaviour, site and regional differences, and landscape-scale climate variation, shape the diet of this endangered marsupial. The dominant influence of climate in shaping LFP diets likely reflects the role of climate in driving truffle-like ECM sporocarp phenology, highlighting the vulnerability of this specialised marsupial to climate change and the importance of conserving habitats that can support truffle-like ECM fungal communities into the future.

Climate change is disrupting plant-pollinator interactions and negatively affecting pollination services. The ability to accurately predict the impacts of climate change on species is crucial for management and maintenance of biodiversity. However, coarse-scale climate prognoses may be inaccurate for forecasting responses of ectothermic insect pollinators that experience extensive fine-scale variation in microclimates. We explored and quantified the relationships between landscape composition, fine-scale microclimate, and pollinator foraging behavior. We conducted observations of plant-pollinator interactions in a range of diverse landscapes and microclimates in Tasmania, recording pollinator behavior (visitation rates and handling time), microclimatic variables (air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, solar radiation, plot thermal heterogeneity) and topography (elevation, aspect, slope, topographic positioning index). Using piecewise structural equation modeling, we quantified the direct and indirect effects of topography and microclimate on plant-pollinator interactions.

We found that pollinator visitation rates increased, and handling time decreased with higher air temperature and lower thermal heterogeneity. Low thermal heterogeneity, in turn, was associated with higher air temperature. Topographic variables such as elevation, aspect and topographic position index were all significant contributors to the local air temperature and thermal heterogeneity, thus indirectly affecting pollinator behavior. These effects suggest that with increasing global temperatures we can expect to see decreased thermal heterogeneity of pollinator foraging habitat, which combined with higher local temperatures is likely to result in higher visitation rates and reduced handling times, potentially impacting pollination efficiency. However, these effects can be significantly exacerbated or buffered by topography, which modulates local microclimates. This highlights the importance of including topography in the predictions of local populations persistence in the face of climate change.

Our findings could improve the accuracy of predictions regarding the effects of climate change on pollination services as well as contribute to our fundamental understanding of ecosystem functioning.

Fragmentation delineates the landscape into a gradient of patches ranging from suitable to unsuitable for diverse herbivore populations. Associational-resistance alone cannot explain the observed herbivory patterns in fragmented mixed-forest stands. A trait-based approach, examining intraspecific variation in plant traits across diverse neighbourhoods, might be critical to comprehend herbivory. In an agricultural-mosaic system in the Aravalli Range of India, we analyzed: i) if proximity to edges influenced plant-herbivore interactions, ii) if intra-specific variation in herbivory damage can be explained by plant traits (leaf area, plant defenses), herbivore diversity, or plant spatial neighbourhood. We laid out plots (n=77) along interior and edge transects, recording plant and herbivore composition, defense traits, percentage herbivory and 5 nearest-neighbours of each plant. Seventeen different plant species were identified in the interior, with Prosopis juliflora, Acacia senegal and Acacia tortilis being the most prevalent, each exhibiting an abundance of approximately 15-18%. However, the edge comprised 12 species and had a more homogenous composition with Acacia tortilis representing the most dominant species at 40% abundance. Using a network approach, we found that proximity to edges reduced herbivore diversity. Plants growing in the edge showed 5% higher herbivory damage with notable inter- and intra-specific variation. Plant defenses, such as leaf alkaloids, was found to be higher in edge plants. The edges exhibited a higher proportion of conspecific neighbours, but the overall neighbour density was comparatively lower than the interior. Furthermore, plants with greater alkaloid concentration that occur spatially with more conspecific neighbours appear to attract fewer herbivores and experience lower damage, revealing a potential dilution effect. Our results show that within-species variations in herbivory are explained by a combined effect of external factors such as local-neighbourhood and intrinsic factors such as plant traits. Our findings spotlight the synergy between plant traits, spatial patterns, and community diversity in fragmented habitats.