We prebaited with carrots up to 4 weeks before trapping, then used carrots and occasionally peanut butter as bait, setting traps in the late afternoon and checking them early the following morning. Wallaby Deterrents. Open parkland is doubly unsuitable for Swamp Wallabies. The wallabies used in this study (see below) were tracked for 268 ± 78 days (mean ±95% confidence interval [95% CI]) and were located 50.0 ± 6.5 times. Relative to wallabies living at 5-year-old sites, individuals at unharvested-forest sites ate more forbs and less ferns and trees (Table 2), and this was reflected by the strong linear correlations between these food types and ordination axis 2 (Table 3). A detailed description of the method can be found in Dowman and Collins (1982). Species that regenerate well after mechanical disturbance or fire, mainly silver wattle (defined as a shrub for the purposes of this study) and austral bracken, were also relatively abundant. However, the Swamps do not seem to tolerate the extreme cold as well as the Bennetts. When grazing, wallabies will often congregate in small groups, though most species are typically solitary. Interpreted as strong evidence for a positive correlation between tree selection and forb relative abundance because the lower confidence limit only just overlaps 0. Nevertheless, selection of individuals was somewhat biased toward less-flighty wallabies and the final distribution of wallabies and sexes between sites and habitat types is shown in Table 1. Overall diet consumption and selection at unharvested-forest and 5-year-old regenerating sites was analyzed with nonmetric multidimentional scaling using the Bray Curtis distance measure. Grasses were difficult to identify to species, so the sample included a variety of types present at each plot. Swamp wallabies have been found to consume substantial amounts of grass in spring when, relative to other available food types, its nitrogen concentration was high (Osawa 1990). The latter effect was primarily driven by changed selection for forbs, shrubs, trees, and ferns, and the selection ranking of trees and ferns changed substantially between sites. The dried material was used to derive 3 variables quantifying forage quality: water content, nitrogen content, and dry matter digestibility. They will also crush and eat the hard seeds and other seeds that have passed through the guts of fruit-eating birds. native grasses, herbs, and ferns. Because the relative availability of some food types differed substantially between these 2 habitat types, we expected overall differences in both diet composition and selection. A pooled sample was used to reflect an extended consumption period that was consistent with forage availability sampled from within the whole home range. To determine dry matter digestibility, the ground sample was weighed and incubated at 40°C with 20 ml of 0.2% pepsin in dilute hydrochloric acid for 24 h. Then, 20 ml of cellulase solution was added to the supernatant and the sample incubated for a further 24 h at 40°C. In addition, swamp wallabies may select forage with a relatively high nitrogen content (Osawa 1990); thus, our conclusions may have been different if stomach samples had been collected in another season. It is dark brown with a lighter stomach and chest. However, the cover of austral bracken remained high. Forage availability.—Vegetation was sampled between February and April (late summer and autumn) in 2005 and 2006 at the intersections of a randomly positioned grid overlaid on each wallaby's home range. They can breed all-year round, and are capable of carrying overlapping pregnancies! In stage 2 of the analysis (Table 5), relative availability was a substantial negative predictor of selection for every food type except shrubs, whereas in most cases the 3 forage quality variables were poor predictors. Baby wallabies will continue to develop inside their mothers’ pouches after birth. This 20,000-ha forest is underlain by stony red duplex soils and dominated by a single range running approximately east–west and rising to 750 m above sea level. Generally active from dusk until dawn, swamp wallabies are mostly solitary animals, but may gather to feed during the evening. And in terms of shelter and the ability to hide from people and dogs, the lack of dense shrubby areas in these parks make them unsuitable. Wallabies are typically small to medium-sized mammals, but the largest can reach 6 feet from head to tail. Collection of stomach samples.—Twenty-two wallabies from 14 spatially independent sites were shot to obtain stomach samples. Our initial prediction, that wallabies would be mixed feeders and demonstrate negative frequency dependence, was strongly supported by univariate models for ferns, forbs, and trees. 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