Are birds occupying historically patchy subtropical rainforests resistant to forest fragmentation?
Pavlacky, David*,1, 2, Goldizen, Anne 1, Possingham, Hugh1, 2, 1 The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia2 The Ecology Centre, St. Lucia, Queensland, Australia ABSTRACT- The present distribution of subtropical rainforest in Australia is a product of prehistoric range contraction and more recent anthropogenic forest fragmentation. Several ecologists suggest the depauperate avifauna of Australia’s rainforests is a consequence of a dramatic reduction of rainforest area and increased patch discontinuity through time. Others have gone on to propose the current Australian rainforest avifauna is adapted to heterogeneous patch structure and therefore resistant to forest fragmentation. Here we quantify the strength of evidence for the “resistance to fragmentation hypothesis” using avian occupancy data collected from 30 rainforest fragments in south-eastern Queensland. We used point-count data and zero-inflated binomial models to estimate patch occupancy and detection probab
