LTERN Data Portal

Systematic surveys for Burramys parvus commenced in Victoria in 1982, and the network of trapping sites has expanded since then. The standard trapping grid (0.25 ha), as described by Mansergh(1984) has been used throughout: 3 x 100 m lines 12.5 m apart with Elliot traps placed 5 m apart (= 60 traps) x 3 days = 180 trap-nights per standard visit. This standard site could be expanded spatially (more lines) or temporally (up to 5 days). More than 90 trapping sites have been established across the Victorian Alps and most have been visited more than once.

There have been three main locations where sites have been established:

Mt Hotham surrounds: Mt Higginbotham (4 sites, annually since 1982, >15 sites with > 3 visits); Mt Loch (3 sites visited 7 times since 1983); Mt Little Higginbotham (3 sites visited 6 times since 2004).

Bogong High Plains and surrounds: (Mt McKay annually/ bi-annually since 1995); Timms Spur (7 surveys since 1992), Bundarra scree (> 2 sites with 10 visits since 1984); Pretty Valley and Falls Creek surrounds (> 10 sites with at least 3 visits; see Heinze et al. (2004)).

Mt Buller: (4 sites visited annually since 1996; 7 sites with at least 3 visits), sampling times include both breeding and non-breeding seasons.

There are other so-called ‘non-successful areas’ (e.g. Mt Wombargo, Cobberras, Mt Stirling) where surveys have failed to detect populations of Burramys.

This package primarily contains data from West Higginbotham site 100 at Mt Hotham as it is the most rigorously sampled and longest term annually monitored Mountain Pygmy-possum (MPP) site. As such many of the data variables only have one entry relating to site 100 at Hotham also called Mt Higginbotham West 100. Also many of the variable won’t apply to site 100 as they relate to data being collected from Mt Buller as part of a recovery and genetic rescue program being implemented there.

Initially, trapping frequency was monthly trapping, but sample times have subsequently been targeted to the breeding season (Nov-Dec) since about 1987.

Three types of data are collected, athough this package only includes type 1.

1 = trapping data for each tagged (marked) individual capture (i.e. one row of data for each individual captured)

2 = summary trapping data where all individuals captured were tallied. This usually applies to unmarked animals other than MPP’s – there is one row of tallied data for each distinct species (i.e. rats, antechinus)

3 = summary site trapping data – occasionally some sites are trapped differently than normal (i.e. different number of arrangement of traps). This information is captured in each row.

At some sites hair samples (non-intrusive) for genetic analysis have been routinely collected since the early 1990s, but this data is not included in this package.