Effects of weather on marsupial folivore activity in a north Queensland upland tropical rainforest.

Abstract

There have been no prior attempts to assess the efTec ts of weather variation on folivorous marsupials in tropical Australia. I used data from 160 spotlighting censuses to test the effects of four weather variables (temperature, cloud cover, rainfall , fog) and moonlight intensity on activity patterns of five arboreal folivores in 1986/ 87 on the Atherton Tableland in northeastern Queensland. The most striking resuh was that three possums (Trichosurus vulpecula, Pseudocheirus herbertensis, Hemibelideus lemuroides) significantly reduced their activity when temperatures fell below 14-16° C. Moreover, diminishing cloud cover and increasing moonlight, which may increase detectability of folivores to predators, appeared to reduce the activity of tropical ringtails (P. herbertensis, P. archeri, H. lemuroides). Lumhohz's Tree-kangaroos (Dendrolagus lumholtzi) seemed lillie influenced by inclement weather, at least over the range of conditions studied. Ecological and biogeographic implications of these findings are discussed.