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- Title
The status of the frog fauna of the Werribee River catchment, southern Victoria, with notes on the utility of large databases in such.
- Authors
Brown, Geoff
- Abstract
The Werribee River catchment, north and west of Melbourne, has experienced major change since European settlement, including the transformation or loss of native vegetation through agriculture and urbanisation. These changes are likely to have influenced the original frog fauna, although this cannot be confirmed since no broad-scale monitoring of the frog fauna in the catchment has been undertaken. Like all of Victoria's catchment areas, the main inventory of the frog fauna in the Werribee River catchment is the Victorian Government's Atlas of Victorian Wildlife database. Reliable records exist for 11 frog species in the Werribee River catchment, some dating back to 1959. Importantly, there are records for two species, Growling Grass Frog Litoria raniformis and Bibron's Toadlet Pseudophryne bibronii, which are officially threatened in Victoria. Species recorded from the catchment display a variety of ecological preferences (e.g. riverine specialists, semiterrestrial breeders, burrowers, and wetland or slow-flowing river species), highlighting the importance of conserving and managing appropriately varied and interconnected habitats. In this paper, the Werribee River Catchment, a typical and recognised management unit, is used as a case study to examine the utility of available data for the management of frogs, and summarise the likely existing threats to this assemblage.
- Subjects
WERRIBEE (Vic.); VICTORIA; WILDLIFE conservation; HABITAT conservation; FROGS
- Publication
Victorian Naturalist, 2011, Vol 128, Issue 2, p36
- ISSN
0042-5184
- Publication type
Case Study