Clare McArthur

Lecturer

Research Interests


Broadly, I am interested in the ecology of mammals - how they live and interact with individuals of their own species, with plants and other animals within their community and with the environment itself. My specific research interest is the ecology and evolution of plant-herbivore interactions. I think of my research as questions, falling roughly under the following topics:

Foraging Ecology of Mammals

Conservation and Management


Plant-Herbivore Interactions

 


Acacia thorns

Plants can't run (although they can sometimes hide).

Instead, they have an array of physical and chemical characteristics that make it difficult for animals to eat them.


Tannins in a gumleaf


Common brushtail possum
  • How do mammalian herbivores deal with these plant characteristics?
  • Do generalists view the plant world the same way as specialists?
  • What behavioural or physiological tricks do they use to get around the problems of eating plants?


Koala


Eucalypt seedlings in wind

 

  • Do mammals exert selective pressure on plants or are they just coping with the responses of plants to other factors, such as shade, wind or insects?


Pademelons: what to eat?


 

 

 

Foraging Ecology of Mammals

Vegetation is patchy at a range of spatial scales. The home range of many animals encompasses one or more of these scales of patchiness. This means they can choose to spend more time in some areas than others.

 


  • How does size, complexity and spacing of vegetation patches affect foraging by specialist or generalist herbivores?
  • How do macropods use the landscape when foraging? What habitats do they prefer to feed or rest in? Does the size of their home range reflect the size and quality of vegetation patches in the landscape?
  • Do sympatric herbivores partition their temporal or spatial use of the landscape or the food within it? How?


Predators represent a third trophic level, complicating the interactions of plants and herbivores.
  • How do predators - or the risk of predators - modify foraging behaviour of herbivores?
  • Does that, in turn, affect plant communities?

 

 

Conservation and Management

The landscape is rapidly changing and this alters the capacity of different species to survive within it.



  • How does fragmentation of native vegetation affect animal populations and communities?

  • Does size, complexity and spacing of vegetation patches affect the probability of finding bandicoots in farmland?
  • Can "scruffy" weeds act as useful refuge in the absence of native vegetation?

Browsing by native mammals con reduce growth of trees in forestry plantations.

  • Can we use our understanding of foraging behaviour to manipulate plantations and reduce browsing?

Testing lupins on a treefarm