Prediction of the distribution and abundance of small mammals in the eucalypt forests of south-eastern Australia from airborne videography

Abstract

The relationship between forest structure or habitat complexity and distribution and abundance has been demonstrated for a variety of mammalian species in the southern forests of Australia. Recently, studies that utilise airborne videography data have predicted forest structure across forested landscapes. This paper unites these two fields of research. Existing models of species abundance were applied to spatial estimates of habitat complexity to produce predictions of the distribution and abundance of two small ground-dwelling mammals commonly found in eucalypt forests. The spatial estimates of habitat complexity were extrapolated across the landscape from videography at 2-m spatial resolution on four 1-km 2 study areas. To examine the accuracy of the abundance predictions, trapping grids for the two species were established across a range of abundances. Linear regression showed a strong positive relationship between the predicted distribution and abundance from the videography and the recorded distribution and abundance for the species.