Moseby Katherine E, Hill Brydie M, Lavery Tyrone H
The University of Adelaide, North Terrace, Adelaide, Australia; Arid Recovery, Roxby Downs, Australia.
Arid Recovery, Roxby Downs, Australia.
PLoS One. 2014 Jun 25;9(6):e99753. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0099753. eCollection 2014.
Reintroduction programs for threatened species often include elaborate release strategies designed to improve success, but their advantages are rarely tested scientifically. We used a set of four experiments to demonstrate that the influence of release strategies on short-term reintroduction outcomes is related to both intrinsic and extrinsic factors. We compared different reintroduction strategies for three mammal species in an arid environment where exotic mammalian predators were removed. Wild greater stick-nest rats selected vegetation shelter sites with greater structural density than captive-bred rats, travelled further from the release site and experienced lower rates of mortality. In comparison, there was no difference in mortality or movement between wild and captive-bred greater bilbies. Burrowing bettongs and greater bilbies were also subjected to immediate and delayed release strategies and whilst no difference was detected in bilbies, bettongs that were subjected to delayed releases lost less weight and took less time to establish burrows than those that were immediately released. Interspecific differences in treatment response were attributed to predation risk, the nature of the release site, and behavioural traits such as shelter investment and sociality. Our varied results highlight the inadequacies of review articles focusing on optimum release protocols due to their attempt to generalise across species and release sites. We provide an example of a predictive model to guide future release strategy experimentation that recognises the range of intrinsic and extrinsic factors influencing reintroduction outcomes. We encourage researchers to treat programs experimentally, identify individual site and species characters that may influence release strategies and record data on movements, mortality, weight dynamics, and settling times and distances. The inherent issues of small sample size and low statistical power that plague most reintroduction experiments suggests there is also a need for increased standardisation and publication of data sets to enable appropriate meta-analyses to occur.
针对濒危物种的重新引入计划通常包括精心设计的放归策略以提高成功率，但其优势很少经过科学检验。我们通过一组四项实验证明，放归策略对短期重新引入结果的影响与内在和外在因素均有关。我们在一个去除了外来哺乳动物捕食者的干旱环境中，比较了三种哺乳动物的不同重新引入策略。野生大棍巢鼠选择的植被遮蔽地点的结构密度比圈养繁殖的老鼠更高，离放归地点更远，死亡率更低。相比之下，野生和圈养繁殖的大兔耳袋狸在死亡率或移动方面没有差异。袋狸和大兔耳袋狸还分别采用了即时放归和延迟放归策略，虽然兔耳袋狸没有检测到差异，但延迟放归的袋狸比即时放归的袋狸体重减轻更少，挖掘洞穴所需时间更短。种间对处理反应的差异归因于捕食风险、放归地点的性质以及诸如遮蔽投入和社会性等行为特征。我们多样的结果凸显了综述文章的不足之处，这些文章试图概括不同物种和放归地点，因而聚焦于最优放归方案。我们提供了一个预测模型的示例，以指导未来的放归策略实验，该模型认识到影响重新引入结果的内在和外在因素的范围。我们鼓励研究人员对计划进行实验，识别可能影响放归策略的个体地点和物种特征，并记录有关移动、死亡率、体重动态以及定居时间和距离的数据。困扰大多数重新引入实验的样本量小和统计功效低的固有问题表明，还需要提高数据集的标准化和数据发布，以便能够进行适当的荟萃分析。
