Anke Frank

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Verified

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• PhD
• Lecturer at Charles Sturt University

ANTHROPOGENIC change to Australian habitats accelerated rapidly during the late 1800s as sheep grazing spread across the continent. In particular, intensive grazing in arid and semi-arid regions is believed to have vastly altered vegetation communities, triggered extensive soil erosion, and reduced shelter available to small mammals, thus increasin...

Arid grasslands are used worldwide for grazing by domestic livestock, generating debate about how this pastoral enterprise may influence native desert biota. One approach to resolving this question is to experimentally reduce livestock numbers and measure the effects. However, a key challenge in doing this is that historical grazing impacts are lik...

The challenges to which plants are exposed in urban environments represent, in miniature, the challenges plants face as a result of global environmental change. Hence, urban habitats provide a unique opportunity to assess whether processes of local adaptation are taking place despite the short temporal and geographical scales that characterize the...

Herbivore exclusion is implemented globally to recover ecosystems from grazing by introduced and native herbivores, but evidence for large‐scale biodiversity benefits is inconsistent in arid ecosystems. We examined the effects of livestock exclusion on dryland plant richness and reproductive capacity. We collected data on plant species richness and...

Grazing represents the most extensive use of land worldwide. Yet its impacts on ecosystem services remain uncertain because pervasive interactions between grazing pressure, climate, soil properties, and biodiversity may occur but have never been addressed simultaneously. Using a standardized survey at 98 sites across six continents, we show that in...

Grazing represents the most extensive use of land worldwide. Yet its impacts on ecosystem services remain uncertain because pervasive interactions between grazing pressure, climate, soil properties, and biodiversity may occur but have never been addressed simultaneously. Using a standardized survey at 98 sites across six continents, we show that in...

1. The challenges to which plants are exposed in urban environments represent, in miniature, the challenges plants face as a result of global environmental change. Hence, urban habitats provide a unique opportunity to assess whether processes of local adaptation are taking place despite the short temporal and geographical scales that characterize t...

Context Invasive predators are a key threat to biodiversity worldwide. In Australia, feral cats are likely to be responsible for many extinctions of native mammal species in the south and centre of the continent. Aims Here we examine the effect of feral cats on native rodent populations in the second of two translocation experiments. Methods In a...

A better understanding of context in decision-making—that is, the internal and external conditions that modulate decisions—is required to help bridge the gap between natural behaviors that evolved by natural selection and more arbitrary laboratory models of anxiety and fear. Because anxiety and fear are mechanisms evolved to manage threats from pre...

Workshop report - Strategies for ecosystem and species conservation: Exploring lessons learnt from Australia and Africa, Charles Darwin University (CDU), Australia, 18-22 November 2019

Global agreements like the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Achi Biodiversity Targets (ABTs) aim to secure human well-being and to protect biodiversity, but little progress has been made in reaching these aims. The key role of biodiversity in securing human well-being is rarely considered a priority – instead short-term economic profits ben...

Fear of predation is a universal motivator. Because predators hunt using stealth and surprise, there is a widespread ability among prey to assess risk from chemical information - scents - in their environment. Consequently, scents often act as particularly strong modulators of memory and emotions. Recent advances in ecological research and analytic...

Fear of predation is a universal motivator. Because predators hunt using stealth and surprise, there is a widespread ability among prey to assess risk from chemical information - scents - in their environment. Consequently, scents often act as particularly strong modulators of memory and emotions. Recent advances in ecological research and analytic...

Non-lethal management of wildlife, both “problem wildlife” and pest species, to protect crops and threatened species is becoming increasingly important as non-human animals and humans come into closer proximity. A particularly promising approach is to apply predator scents to manipulate the cost/benefit ratio that influences the behavioral decision...

Introduced predators have a global reputation for causing declines and extinctions of native species. Native prey naiveté towards novel predators is thought to be a key reason for predator impacts. However, naiveté is not necessarily forever: where coexistence establishes, it is likely that naiveté will be reduced through adaptation, and the once a...

Removing cattle as a management tool to conserve biodiversity may not necessarily alter grazing impacts on vegetation if other introduced or native herbivores move in and replace the cattle after removal. This study investigated whether there was a difference in the abundance of native red kangaroos (Osphranter (Macropus) rufus) and introduced fera...

Context Feral cats are a major cause of mammal declines and extinctions in Australia. However, cats are elusive and obtaining reliable ecological data is challenging. Although camera traps are increasingly being used to study feral cats, their successful use in northern Australia has been limited. Aims We evaluated the efficacy of camera-trap samp...

Australia has experienced dramatic declines and extinctions of its native rodent species over the last 200 years, particularly in southern Australia. In the tropical savanna of northern Australia significant declines have occurred only in recent decades. The later onset of these declines suggests that the causes may differ from earlier declines in...

Ecosystems across the world, and the biodiversity they support, are experiencing increasing anthropogenic pressure, and many will not persist without intervention. Given their complexity, the International Union for Conservation of Nature has adopted an international standard for ecosystem risk assessment that builds on the strengths of the species...

Introduction: Recent studies at sites in northern Australia have reported severe and rapid decline of several native mammal species, notwithstanding an environmental context (small human population size, limited habitat loss, substantial reservation extent) that should provide relative conservation security. All of the more speciose taxonomic group...

Introduction: Recent studies at sites in northern Australia have reported severe and rapid decline of several native mammal species, notwithstanding an environmental context (small human population size, limited habitat loss, substantial reservation extent) that should provide relative conservation security. All of the more speciose taxonomic group...

The recent commentary by Woinarski (2014, Global Ecology and Biogeography, doi: 10.1111/geb.12165) disagreed with our conclusions on the correlates of decline in the marsupials of tropical Australia (Fisher et al., 2014, Global Ecology and Biogeography, 23, 181–190). We compared traits of species that were associated with range decline in southern...

Biodiversity conservation in rangeland environments is often addressed by removing livestock, but inconsistent responses by biota mean that the efficacy of this form of management is hotly debated. Reasons for this inconsistency include the usually short duration and small spatial scale of manipulations compared to the area of grazing properties, a...

Small mammal species are declining across northern Australia. Predation by feral cats Felis sylvestris catus is one hypothesised cause. Most evidence of cat impacts on native prey comes from islands, where cat densities are often high, but cats typically occur at low densities on mainland Australia. We conducted a field experiment to measure the ef...

Repeated measures ANOVA results on the effects of historic grazing intensity (‘light’ and ‘heavy’) and recent cattle removal (‘+ cattle’ and ‘− cattle’) in the Simpson Desert, central Australia, on cover of ‘total vegetation’, ‘spinifex hummocks’, ‘herbs & forbs’ and ‘grasses & sedges’. Significant results (P<0.05) are shown in bold. (DOCX)

Presence/absence of plant species accumulated over the 3 year study period in sites with different historic grazing intensities (‘light’ and ‘heavy’) and recent cattle removal (‘+ cattle’ and ‘− cattle’) in the Simpson Desert, central Australia. Species are ordered by family, x = present and no symbol = not detected. (DOCX)

Repeated measures ANOVA results on the effects of historic grazing intensity (‘light’ and ‘heavy’) and recent cattle removal (‘+ cattle’ and ‘− cattle’) in the Simpson Desert, central Australia, on average abundances of a) small mammals and b) reptiles. MS = mean square, SS = sums of squares, df = degrees of freedom. Significant results (P<0.05) ar...

Repeated measures ANOVA results on the effects of historic grazing intensity (‘light’ and ‘heavy’) and recent cattle removal (‘+ cattle’ and ‘− cattle’) in the Simpson Desert, central Australia, on average abundances of a) Agamidae and Scincidae and b) Ctenophorus isolepis, C. nuchalis, Lerista labialis and Ctenotus pantherinus. Degrees of freedom...

Repeated measures ANOVA results on the effects of historic grazing intensity (‘light’ and ‘heavy’) and recent cattle removal (‘+ cattle’ and ‘− cattle’) in the Simpson Desert, central Australia, on average abundances of a) Rodentia and Dasyuridae and b) Pseudomys hermannsburgensis and Sminthopsis youngsoni. Degrees of freedom for between factor tes...

Total captures of reptiles in sites with different historic grazing intensities (‘light’ and ‘heavy’) and recent cattle removal (‘+ cattle’ and ‘− cattle’) in the Simpson Desert, central Australia. Numbers in brackets are total captures over all trips, if different from those captured during trips when balanced datasets were obtained. Recaptures wi...

Repeated measures ANOVA results on the effects of historic grazing intensity (‘light’ and ‘heavy’) and recent cattle removal (‘+ cattle’ and ‘− cattle’) in the Simpson Desert, central Australia, comparing the average species richness and diversity per grid and trip in all four treatment combinations, for a) small mammals and b) reptiles. Degrees of...

Aim A third of all modern (after 1500) mammal extinctions (24/77) are Australian species. These extinctions have been restricted to southern A ustralia, predominantly in species of ‘critical weight range’ (35–5500 g) in drier climate zones. Introduced red foxes ( V ulpes vulpes ) that prey on species in this range are often blamed. A new wave of de...

The activities of livestock in arid environments typically centre on watering points, with grazing impacts often predicted to decrease uniformly, as radial piospheres, with distance from water. In patchy desert environments, however, the spatial distribution of grazing impacts is more difficult to predict. In this study sightings and dung transects...