Continental-scale shift in foraging habitat use by a highly nomadic species following Australia’s Black Summer megafires
Data files
Nov 03, 2025 version files 321.61 MB
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foraging_data_by_sex_for_spatial_analysis.csv
321.61 MB
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README.md
1.41 KB
Abstract
Extreme ecological disturbances, such as floods, droughts, heatwaves, and wildfires, have increased in frequency and intensity under anthropogenic climate change, and this is projected to continue in the coming decades. The responses of nomadic species to these events are largely unknown. The Australian 2019/2020 ‘Black Summer’ megafires burnt a substantial proportion of the range of the highly nomadic grey-headed flying-fox (Pteropus poliocephalus). Here, we examine the foraging habitat utilisation of P. poliocephalus in response to this extreme disturbance event by comparing continental-scale telemetry datasets of pre- and post-fire foraging locations from large samples of flying-foxes tracked before (2012-17) and after (2022-24) the 2019/20 megafires. We performed a spatial overlay analysis of foraging locations with static maps of the burnt area and foraging habitat characterised by resource quality (productivity-reliability scores) and coverage (fractional cover). Tracked flying-foxes preferentially visited higher-quality foraging habitats that were generally of higher coverage; yet these habitats were disproportionately burnt by the megafires, despite their already limited areal availability. Subsequent to the megafires, we observed a population-level redistribution of foraging visits to unburnt, lower-quality, lower-coverage foraging habitats, including those in inland areas rarely visited previously. The extreme mobility of P. poliocephalus enhances its resilience to the impacts of widespread habitat disturbance caused by megafires, but the observed shift in foraging habitat utilisation to more marginal foraging habitat suggests an overall negative impact of the disturbance on the population. It is unclear whether these marginal habitats provided sufficient resources to support the population following the megafires. Incorporating dynamic environmental data, alongside population monitoring data, is needed to provide a more precise assessment of the impacts of widespread ecological disturbances on P. poliocephalus and other highly nomadic species to inform specific interventions needed to enhance the resilience of these species in a changing climate.
Dataset DOI: 10.5061/dryad.xgxd254t5
Description of the data and file structure
Files and variables
File: foraging_data_by_sex_for_spatial_analysis.csv
Description: This dataset contains rows representing individual grid cells and columns representing the following variables associated with each grid cell.
Variables:
- prefire.fix: Number of foraging visits in the pre-2019/20 tracking dataset (all individuals, regardless of sex)
- prefire.fix.f: Number of foraging visits in the pre-2019/20 tracking dataset (females only)
- prefire.fix.m: Number of foraging visits in the pre-2019/20 tracking dataset (males only)
- postfire.fix: Number of foraging visits in the post-2019/20 tracking dataset (all females)
- fire.sev.modal: Modal fire severity class
- fire.sev.max: Maximum fire severity class
- hab.quality.cont: Continuous habitat quality value
- hab.quality.cat: Categorical habitat quality class
- area.km2: Area of the grid cell in square kilometres
- hab.coverage.cont: Continuous habitat coverage value
- within.range: Indicates whether the grid cell lies within the species range of the grey-headed flying-fox (Eby et al. 2021)
- state: Australian state in which the grid cell is located
Missing data code: NA
