Seasonal changes in home-range area and habitat use by the agile wallaby (Macropus agilis)

Abstract

Radio-tagged male and female agile wallabies were tracked in the wet and dry seasons at a site in Darwin, Northern Territory, and home ranges estimated using a kernel-based estimator. Home-range size (95% contour) was larger in the dry season, when food quality was poorer, and males had larger home ranges than females. Core range size (55% contour) did not differ between seasons or sexes. Average male and female home-range sizes in the wet season were 16.6 ha and 11.3 ha respectively. Wet-season core range sizes were 4.8 ha and 3.2 ha respectively. Average male and female home-range sizes in the dry season were 24.6 ha and 15.3 ha respectively, and dry-season core range sizes were 5.1 ha and 4.0 ha respectively. Home-range size for both sexes varied in the two seasons; the smallest and largest female home ranges were 6.3 ha and 24.0 ha respectively, while male home-range size varied from 7.6 ha to 38.2 ha. Seasonal differences in home-range size can be attributed to expansion of night-time foraging areas in the dry season when good-quality food resources were in short supply. Habitat use also differed between seasons. In the dry season more fixes were located in forest areas, particularly in the evening, when wallabies foraged in forest areas for alternate food resources including browse, leaf litter, flowers and fruits of rainforest tree and shrub species. In the wet season, wallabies emerged from day-time resting areas earlier in the afternoon and therefore more wallabies were located in open areas grazing on high-quality herbage in the evening.