habitat selection

Animals that inhabit the alpine zone often persist in isolated and fragmented populations and possess a range of behaviours and adaptations that enable them to survive in these harsh environments. These characteristics can make them particularly susceptible to escalating anthropogenic threats, including climate change. New Zealand has a diverse lizard fauna, of which approximately 25% of species inhabit the alpine zone. The cryptic nature of many alpine lizards makes them difficult to find and study, limiting effective conservation management.

Sika deer (Cervus nippon) have attained high densities within their introduced range in the central North Island, New Zealand. They are an important big-game species for recreational hunters in New Zealand, but they can have unwanted impacts on native plants, such as reducing seedling growth rates. Management of sika deer requires detailed knowledge about which resources are important to them and how resource selection changes temporally.

The Chatham petrel (Pterodroma axillaris) is an endangered species restricted to a single population on South East Island, Chatham Islands, New Zealand. The key threat to Chatham petrel breeding success is interference with chicks by broad-billed prions (Pachyptila vittata) prospecting for burrows for their oncoming breeding season. This burrow competition has resulted from alteration to breeding habitat by humans throughout the Chatham Islands.

We investigated why some mature females of New Zealand’s critically endangered parrot, the kakapo (Strigops habroptilus), did not attempt to breed during the 2005 breeding season on Codfish Island. At a population level, the initiation of kakapo breeding appears to correspond with years of mast fruiting of rimu (Dacrydium cupressinum) trees, with the proportion of females that breed each season dependent on the quantity of rimu fruit available.