Michael Calver

For years observational studies of animal feeding behaviour relied on researchers with cameras, binoculars and notebooks, observing animals and recording where they foraged, how they captured prey and the foods taken. These data underpin species management plans, and developing and testing ecological hypotheses. This chapter describes how observational studies are conducted and analysed. Field studies benefit from diverse technological skills, careful design and statistical analyses. New technologies, such as camera traps and drones, complement and enrich standard observational techniques and extend observational work into unstudied environments, such as the open ocean. Observing animals in the field should be fun, improving both understanding and conservation management. This chapter is designed to encourage field studies.

Introduction
Over 100 years ago, McAtee (1912) set out to settle once and for all the debate on whether data on the contents of animal stomachs should be presented as percentage-by-bulk (the volume of each prey type; percentage volume or volumetric percentage) or numerically (based on counts of the number of individuals in each food type; numerical percentage). He didn’t succeed, with numerous other authors, including Pinkas et al. (1971) and Hart et al. (2002), also considering the question many years later. Indices combining multiple methods were proposed, while others argued strongly for presentation of the different methods individually to facilitate combining data across multiple studies in meta-analyses (Buckland et al. 2017). The story continues in Chapter 3, where the authors wrestle with the practical problems of identifying foods from stomach contents and quantifying the findings. The persistence of the debate confirms the ongoing interest in animal diets, acknowledging that there is still much discussion on how best to describe and quantify their important features. In this chapter we first outline the compelling reasons why it is important to study animal diets, grouping them under the themes of natural history, ecosystem function, food selection behaviour and practical applications. We then turn to the question of how to study animal diets, which is the primary focus of the book, explaining how the remaining chapters are structured to answer this question.

Effective conservation of Australasian marsupials requires detailed knowledge of their food habits and activity patterns. Ancestral marsupials were probably nocturnal insectivores. Food habits of extant fauna are studied by techniques such as direct observations, analysis of prey remains in stomach contents or feces, field experiments, eDNA, stable isotope analysis, and chemical tracers. Species in the order Dasyuromorphia are mainly carnivorous, including insectivores, faunivores, and a specialist termite feeder, the Numbat Myrmecobius fasciatus. Those in the order Peramelemorphia are omnivorous, although dentition and gut anatomy suggest that some species might specialize. Diprotodontians comprise mainly herbivores such as kangaroos and possums, but also some omnivores and a family of extinct carnivores, the Thylacoleonidae. The diprotodont family Tarsipedidae includes only the Honey Possum Tarsipes rostratus which, uniquely, specializes on nectar and pollen; larger possums include substantial portions of foliage, petioles, and stems in their diets. Foraging usually occurs at night, but some marsupials meet their energetic and nutritional requirements via activity throughout the 24-h cycle, others are crepuscular, and one species – the Numbat – is diurnal. The activity patterns of some species appear to be invariant. In other species activity is modified by extrinsic factors including season, weather, environmental conditions, and biotic interactions such as predation and by intrinsic factors such as sex, age, and hunger. Although nocturnality is the basal condition, activity patterns in Australasian marsupials often represent a balance between the need to seek food and other resources and the risks that are inherent in leaving safe areas to acquire them.

Bibliometrics – methods to quantitatively analyse the quality and impact of scientific or technical literature – are now a central part of the management of modern science. Through them, research managers seek to encourage quality and productivity and use scarce research funds effectively. Researchers are ranked on a range of quantitative assessments to measure the quality of their work, and the results influence employment prospects, grants, tenure and promotions. Unfortunately, researchers anxious to maximise their prospects may concentrate on good scores, not good science. This could change what they research, what they publish and where they publish. Natural history, baseline research and research of regional (but not international) significance could be marginalised despite the clear benefits of such research for monitoring, hypothesis generation and local management. These difficulties are compounded by inappropriate applications of common bibliometric statistics, such as the persistence of the discredited views that the quality of a paper may be judged by the journal in which it appears or that a simple citation count alone indicates the merit of a paper or a researcher. This paper takes a role-playing approach, centred on a fictitious interview as part of a promotion application, to explore some of the uses and misuses of bibliometrics and how researchers can present their case honestly, while defending against abuses and championing unfashionable but valuable areas of research.

Scientific publication is undergoing rapid change. The expansion of the internet has facilitated electronic publication, while the prevailing fashion for 18quantifying 19 the quality of academic papers, academic journals, authors and institutions is changing where authors publish, what they publish and also the content of what journals want to publish. In Australia these forces are exacerbated by the Commonwealth government 19s Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative, with journal assessment a key component of its focus on the quality of university research. Not all journals will survive the new conditions, nor will those kinds of research and researchers that do not meet the preferences of the surviving journals. This is an example of politically driven change with far-reaching environmental consequences - what Recher and Ehrlich (2005) called 18the Arbustocene 19. In particular, research on uniquely Australian natural history and ecology may suffer because, despite its value for local conservation issues, such regional research is seldom accepted by the major journals in North America and Europe or by the growing number of Australian journals aspiring to an international profile. We argue that the 18empty niche 19 in publishing Australian natural history can be filled by the journals of Australia 19s naturalists 19 clubs, especially if the papers are accessible on-line via a common link enabling searching across all the clubs 19 journals simultaneously. We propose the acronym of JANCO, for Journals of the Australian Naturalists 19 Clubs Online, for this particular database and encourage applications for funds to make the concept a reality.

In January 1849, members of Western Australian Surveyor General John Roe’s expedition were forced to halt after crossing the Blackwood River near Kojonup, in the south-west of the state. Their horses were lethargic after browsing some fleshy-leafed vegetation along the route and had to be rested for a day. The horses were lucky to recover. The plants they had eaten contained fluoroacetate, one of the most toxic substances known. Although the poison does not act rapidly, doses of as little as 1 mg per kg of body weight are lethal to a wide range of animals, and some species are killed by even weaker doses. Although Roe’s horses fell ill and other introduced European livestock died after browsing these plants, many of the Australian native Herbivores in this region are unharmed by eating these plants. Why is fluoroacetate so toxic? How do some native species overcome this toxicity? Is resistance to fluoroacetate poisoning transmitted from generation to generation? The answers to these questions lie in the properties of cells. Chapter aims: This chapter covers the common characteristics of all life, the basic structure and functions of cells and the significant differences between the two main groups of organisms the prokaryotes and the eukaryotes. The fluoroacetate toxicity example illustrates how knowledge of cell metabolism can be important when dealing with environmental problems.

When Europeans settled Australia, the burrowing bettong (Bettongia lesuew-) was widespread and abundant. It occurred in western New South Wales and Victoria, all of South Australia, the southern half of the Northern Territory and much of the eastern and north-western reaches of Western Australia) with isolated populations in the woodlands of the south-west. However, it declined rapidly and was probably extinct in New South Wales and Victoria by the end of the 19th century, in South Australia by the 1950s, in the Northern Territory by the 1960s and in mainland Western Australia by the 1940s, persisting only on islands off the Western Australian coast. While the burrowing bettong declined, the introduced European rabbit (Oiyctolagus cumculus) and red fox (Vulpes vulpes) expanded rapidly in range and numbers. The first big release of rabbits was in Victorian in the late 1850s to establish populations for hunting. Despite belated attempts at control, they had spread across the southern two-thirds of Australia by the early 20th century, damaging native vegetation and crops and accelerating soil erosion. Foxes were also introduced for hunting near Melbourne, Victoria, in 1845 and 1860. They bred and dispersed rapidly, encouraged by the proliferation of rabbits as food. Foxes now range across much of Australia except the tropical north and many offshore islands, including recently Tasmania. Foxes are a significant cause of decline in native mammals (Chapter 2), an agricultural pest and a potentially important reservoir for rabies should the disease reach Australia. Population ecology, the subject of this chapter, seeks reasons for phenomena such as the calamitous decline of the burrowing bettong and the rapid increase in the rabbit and fox Populations. Chapter aims: In this chapter we describe the properties of populations, the methods for measuring their key features (density, size, recruitment, deaths and migrations)) and how techniques differ for plants and animals. We discuss the factors influencing population growth, and illustrate practical applications of population ecology for fields such as pest control, conserving endangered species and harvesting natural resources.

Wentworth shire in rural Victoria may become the site of one of Australia’s most ambitious engineering projects. A private company plans to build a 1 km high solar tower surrounded by a 5 km wide greenhouse to generate electricity to power up to 200 000 homes. If it proceeds, the large-scale venture will be a commercial version of a 200 m tall, 50 kW prototype built near Manzanares, south-eastern Spain, in 1982. It ran with minimal maintenance for 7 years, delivering power night and day to the local grid. The principles of solar tower technology are simple. Hot air is generated from solar energy in a glass or polycarbonate greenhouse surrounding the tower. Within the tower, temperatures fall by 1°C per 100 m of altitude, so the air at the top of a 1 km-tall tower will be about 10°C cooler than at the base. Heated air entering the tower from the surrounding greenhouse increases the temperature differential, so the hot air rises by convection, just like the updraught in a chimney. The rising air spins wind turbines mounted in the tower to generate electricity. At night, heat stored in solar cells during the day is released to continue heating air and powering the turbines. Although the capital cost of building a solar tower is high, the final product is non-polluting and very cheap to run and maintain. Solar towers show how human ingenuity can transform solar energy into forms suitable for our use. But using solar energy is hardly original. Green plants and some prokaryotic organisms have done that for millennia, converting solar energy into organic compounds in the process of photosynthesis. In turn, the energy stored in those organic compounds can be released in cellular respiration to power cellular functions. Chapter aims: In this chapter the important processes of photosynthesis and respiration which make solar energy available to all organisms, are described. This requires an appreciation Of how energy can be trapped, stored and released from chemical bonds so a knowledge of the key molecules and metabolic pathways is important.

In 2001 scientists from the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service (now Department of Environment and Climate Change), La Trobe University and an environmental consulting firm investigated a mysterious death of grass outside a cave in Australia’s Snowy Mountains. Heavy rains had washed dead bogong moths (Agrotis infusa) from the cave and grass touched by this outwash died. Investigations revealed that arsenic concentrated in the dead bogong moths poisoned the grass. Worryingly, arsenic occurred in the bodies or the droppings of three mammal species eating bogong moths, so arsenic contamination was spreading in the food chain. The arsenic came from the plains of Queensland and western New South Wales, where bogong moths breed in autumn (Figure 27.1). The grubs, called cutworm caterpillars, eat grasses and crops before pupating in the soil to develop into winged adult moths. Arsenic-based insecticides were used intensively in the early 20th century and some are still available, so cutworm caterpillars probably absorb arsenic when eating crops. The adults migrate to the Snowy Mountains, aestivating during summer in caves until cooler weather when they return to the plains (Figure 27.2). The bogong migration is amazing and inspirational, part of the natural legacy bequeathed by the Australian environment to its human occupants. By contrast, the moths’ residual arsenic toxicity is disturbing, showing how human intervention may squander or spoil rich natural assets. You are now, though, in a position to understand and to solve such environmental problems and to reflect on what the environment and its conservation mean to you. Chapter aims: In this final chapter we revisit the three case studies introduced in Chapter 1: Leadbeater’s possum, the crown-of-thorns starfish and the Corrigin grevillea. We show how theories and techniques described in this book are applied to these cases. To suggest what a career in environmental biology entails, we conclude with views from two eminent Australian environmental biologists. They describe the challenges of their careers and the changes in technology and in society’s attitudes they have seen.