DOI: 10.5061/dryad.xgxd254t5
title: Continental-scale shift in foraging habitat use by a highly nomadic species following Australia’s Black Summer megafires

description: Extreme ecological disturbances, such as floods, droughts, heatwaves, and
 wildfires, have increased in frequency and intensity under anthropogenic
 climate change, and this is projected to continue in the coming decades.
 The responses of nomadic species to these events are largely unknown. The
 Australian 2019/2020 ‘Black Summer’ megafires burnt a substantial
 proportion of the range of the highly nomadic grey-headed flying-fox
 (Pteropus poliocephalus). Here, we examine the foraging habitat
 utilisation of P. poliocephalus in response to this extreme disturbance
 event by comparing continental-scale telemetry datasets of pre- and
 post-fire foraging locations from large samples of flying-foxes tracked
 before (2012-17) and after (2022-24) the 2019/20 megafires. We performed a
 spatial overlay analysis of foraging locations with static maps of the
 burnt area and foraging habitat characterised by resource quality
 (productivity-reliability scores) and coverage (fractional cover). Tracked
 flying-foxes preferentially visited higher-quality foraging habitats that
 were generally of higher coverage; yet these habitats were
 disproportionately burnt by the megafires, despite their already limited
 areal availability. Subsequent to the megafires, we observed a
 population-level redistribution of foraging visits to unburnt,
 lower-quality, lower-coverage foraging habitats, including those in inland
 areas rarely visited previously. The extreme mobility of P. poliocephalus
 enhances its resilience to the impacts of widespread habitat disturbance
 caused by megafires, but the observed shift in foraging habitat
 utilisation to more marginal foraging habitat suggests an overall negative
 impact of the disturbance on the population. It is unclear whether these
 marginal habitats provided sufficient resources to support the population
 following the megafires. Incorporating dynamic environmental data,
 alongside population monitoring data, is needed to provide a more precise
 assessment of the impacts of widespread ecological disturbances on P.
 poliocephalus and other highly nomadic species to inform specific
 interventions needed to enhance the resilience of these species in a
 changing climate.
description: # Continental-scale shift in foraging habitat use by a highly nomadic
 species following Australia’s Black Summer megafires Dataset DOI:
 [10.5061/dryad.xgxd254t5](10.5061/dryad.xgxd254t5) ## Description of the
 data and file structure ### Files and variables #### File:
 foraging_data_by_sex_for_spatial_analysis.csv **Description:** This
 dataset contains rows representing individual grid cells and columns
 representing the following variables associated with each grid cell.
 **Variables:** * prefire.fix: Number of foraging visits in the pre-2019/20
 tracking dataset (all individuals, regardless of sex) *
 prefire.fix.f: Number of foraging visits in the pre-2019/20 tracking
 dataset (females only) * prefire.fix.m: Number of foraging visits in the
 pre-2019/20 tracking dataset (males only) * postfire.fix: Number of
 foraging visits in the post-2019/20 tracking dataset (all females) *
 fire.sev.modal: Modal fire severity class * fire.sev.max: Maximum fire
 severity class * hab.quality.cont: Continuous habitat quality value *
 hab.quality.cat: Categorical habitat quality class * area.km2: Area of the
 grid cell in square kilometres * hab.coverage.cont: Continuous habitat
 coverage value * within.range: Indicates whether the grid cell lies within
 the species range of the grey-headed flying-fox (Eby et al. 2021) * state:
 Australian state in which the grid cell is located Missing data code: NA