Landscape and climate impacts on the spatiotemporal risks of Passeriformes

trauma admitted to a wildlife hospital in Australia

Rosalia, Master of Animal Science, majoring Wildlife Biology,
The University of Queensland

Abstract:
Background: Environmental and climate changes have been linked to the increasing trends of
wildlife hospitalisation worldwide. In Australia, Passeriformes is one of the most common order
of birds admitted to wildlife hospital due to traumatic injuries. Only a few studies have used
wildlife hospital records to understand the patterns of Passeriformes trauma spatiotemporally.
This study aimed to assess the hypotheses that the patterns of Passeriformes trauma were
spatiotemporally structured and influenced by landscape and climate variations.
Methods: This study assessed 9355 records of Passeriformes trauma rescued from 80
statistical area level 2 (SA level 2) regions (in Queensland and New South Wales) during
2010-2019 sourced from Currumbin Wildlife Hospital (CWH) databases. Spatial cluster
analysis consisting of Moran’s I and local spatial autocorrelation analysis (LISA) statistics were
performed using R software to see the significance of clustering patterns of the trauma
incidents. Geoadditive spatial regressions were also undertaken to explore the association
between trauma incidents and environmental and climate variables by performing conditional
autoregressive (CAR) model.
Results and conclusion: The highest Passeriformes admissions due to trauma occurred in
2015 (13.77%) and 2016 (14.22%) involving 45 and 56 Passeriformes species identified
respectively. Of those, Australian magpie and noisy miner were the two most common species
admitted to CWH. The trauma risks for both species were significantly clustered across years
and seasons (highest magnitude occurred in Autumn and Spring). The hotspots were
identified in Murwillumbah region, Tugun, Tallebudgera, Tweed Heads, Pottsville, Canungra,
Springbrook, Alberton and Palm Beach. It is predicted that urbanisation had a significant
impact on the trauma admission rates of both focal species. Hence, further assessment on
the impacts of urbanisation in eastern regions of Australia to the rates of Passeriformes
traumatic injuries is prominent to mitigate further risks.