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Understanding home range behaviour and resource selection of invasive common brushtail possums (Trichosurus vulpecula) in urban environments

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Abstract

Because invasive species are often opportunistic and behaviourally flexible, they tend to be successful in urban landscapes, where they may use space differently than in their more traditional habitats. Consequently, control strategies developed for invasive pest species in non-urban areas may not succeed in an urban context. Using GPS tracking, we examined habitat use by an invasive pest, the brushtail possum (Trichosurus vulpecula) in residential New Zealand habitats; these habitats comprise a large proportion of the urban landscape and are currently not targeted for pest control. We predicted that home ranges of possums in residential areas would be larger than those in non-urban habitats due to lower densities of their primary food resource, plant material; that possums would prefer forest fragment habitat; and that they would avoid roads due to the mortality risk. Home range sizes estimated using mechanistic Brownian bridges and 100 % minimum convex polygons were smaller or similar in size to those recorded in rural and forest habitats. Resource utilization functions and the regression of utilization distribution probabilities against environmental variables showed that possums selected forest fragments primarily, followed by residential habitat characterised by large gardens with a degree of vegetative structural complexity. Roads were not avoided. Control operations should expand their scope to include residential areas containing mature, diverse vegetation rather than only focussing on forest fragments, a strategy that ignores biodiversity values in residential habitats, and is likely to be unsuccessful due to reinvasion potential from neighbouring residential areas.

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Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge Danilo Hegg, Charlotte Seifert, and Dave McPhee for assistance with fieldwork, and Antoni Moore for GIS support. We would also like to thank the homeowners and the Dunedin City Council for providing continual access to their properties throughout the sampling period. This research was funded by the Department of Zoology, the Federation of Otago Graduate Women (Brenda Shore Award for Women), and the Marples and Marples Ecology Fund, while A. L. A. was supported by a University of Otago Postgraduate Scholarship. This study was conducted under University of Otago Animal Ethics Approval D38/09.

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Adams, A.L., Recio, M.R., Robertson, B.C. et al. Understanding home range behaviour and resource selection of invasive common brushtail possums (Trichosurus vulpecula) in urban environments. Biol Invasions 16, 1791–1804 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-013-0627-4

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