Koala feeding and roosting trees in the Campbelltown area of New South Wales.

Abstract

IN assessing habitat quality for koalas (Phascolarctos cinereus), the relative importance of trees used for food and for roosting must be established. Robbins and Russell (1978) and Hindell et al. (1985) suggested that trees in which P. cinereus roosted by day reliably predicted the trees they browsed. Tun (1993) and Hasegawa (1995), however, using leaf cuticle analysis of P. cinereus faecal pellets, questioned that suggestion . Phillips and Callaghan (2000) investigated preferences of P. cinereus in the Campbelltown area, 40 km southwest of Sydney, by recording the presence of faecal pellets beneath trees in survey quadrats. They concluded that Eucalyptus punctata (grey gum) and E. agglomerata (blue-leaved stringy bark) were preferred species on shale-based soils. However, this method still does not distinguish between trees used for roosting and those used for feeding. Cuticle analysis was therefore used at Campbelltown as a test of dietary preference (Table 1). These data on species use were compared with sightings from a radio-tracking study of the same individuals (Table 2), in a separate study (Ward 2002).