James Brazill-Boast

Macquarie University · Department of Biological Sciences

Societal Impact Statement Large quantities of diverse native seeds are required to scale up global restoration efforts. However, it remains unclear for many ecosystems how the diversity of available seed in commercial stocks reflects the composition of the ecosystems where vegetation is being remade. This study highlights existing shortfalls in the...

The global trend in offsetting for nonet loss (NNL) is increasing, focusing on protecting high-condition habitats and restoring degraded ones. Australia's New South Wales (NSW) Biodiversity Offset Scheme (BOS) promotes active restoration (AR; reconstruction of missing ecosystem properties, AR) on offset sites. We examined (1) the adoption of AR und...

Effective private land conservation strategies that consider both landholder preferences and future climatic conditions are critical for preserving biodiversity and ecosystem services. Yet, the interaction and relative importance of these factors for conservation planning performance is unknown. Here, we assess the importance of considering landhol...

Managers must determine which interventions best protect threatened species when the outcomes of interventions are uncertain. Adaptive management is a dynamic optimization approach that generates optimal management actions based on current knowledge while learning to improve future management outcomes. Although adaptive management theory is well‐de...

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service oversees the recovery of many species protected by the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA). Recent research suggests that a structured approach to allocating conservation resources could increase recovery outcomes for ESA listed species. Quantitative approaches to decision support can efficiently allocate limited fi...

Evaluating the effectiveness of management actions for threatened species recovery is critical for adaptive management. However, decision makers frequently lack the resources and time to develop data‐driven models for rigorous monitoring and evaluation. Expert knowledge can be useful in such situations, but can be challenging to translate into spec...

A substantial amount of money has been spent globally on threatened species management. While the number of threatened species continues to increase, we would expect to observe a portion of those receiving active management to respond positively and recover over time. Management of these recovering species requires a different approach to those whi...

With inadequate resources to manage the threats facing biodiversity worldwide, achieving projected management outcomes is critical for efficient resource allocation and species recovery. Despite this, conservation plans to mitigate threats rarely articulate the likelihood of management success. Here we develop a general value of information approac...

We discuss here the merits of an explicit resource allocation framework and introduce a prototype decision tool that we developed with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to facilitate transparent and efficient recover allocation decisions.

In a global environment of increasing species extinctions and decreasing availability of funds with which to combat the causes of biodiversity loss, maximising the efficiency of conservation efforts is crucial. The only way to ensure maximum return on conservation investment is to incorporate the cost, benefit and likelihood of success of conservat...

BrazillBoastetal_dataset.xls. The spreadsheet contains the data required to calculate priority score for each species included in the prioritization protocol. There are two worksheets: PerSpeciesCostBenefit includes one record per species, with values for total 50-year project cost (net present value, with sharing) (C), probability of 100-year viab...

Declines in population size can compromise the viability of populations by reducing the effective population size (Ne), which may result in loss of genetic diversity and inbreeding. Temporal population genetic data can be a powerful tool for testing the presence and severity of reductions in Ne. The Gouldian finch (Erythrura gouldiae) is a flagship...

There is contentious debate surrounding the merits of de-extinction as a biodiversity conservation tool. Here, we use extant analogues to predict conservation actions for potential de-extinction candidate species from New Zealand and the Australian state of New South Wales, and use a prioritization protocol to predict the impacts of reintroducing a...

Assessment of genetic diversity and connectivity between regions can inform conservation managers about risk of inbreeding, potential for adaptation and where population boundaries lie. The Gouldian finch (Erythrura gouldiae) is a threatened species in northern Australia, occupying the savannah woodlands of the biogeographically complex monsoon tro...

Microsatellite methods. Detailed methods for microsatellite amplification and quality checks. (DOCX)

Pairwise diversity, differentiation and spatial autocorrelation results. Figures and tables include uncorrected p-values for differences between each population comparison, pairwise estimates of genetic differentiation and spatial autocorrelation. (DOCX)

Gouldian finches at Wyndham. Detailed description of methods and recapture rates of Gouldian finches at Wyndham between 2008 and 2013. (DOCX)

K-means clustering and discriminant analysis of principal components. Text and figures describe the detailed methods and model checks associated with the analysis of the microsatellite and SNP data in adegenet. (DOCX)

In socially monogamous species, individuals can use extra-pair paternity and offspring sex allocation as adaptive strategies to ameliorate costs of genetic incompatibility with their partner. Previous studies on domesticated Gouldian finches (Erythrura gouldiae) demonstrated a genetic incompatibility between head colour morphs, the effects of which...

In socially monogamous species, individuals can use extra-pair paternity and offspring sex allocation as adaptive strategies to ameliorate costs of genetic incompatibility with their partner. Previous studies on domesticated Gouldian finches (Erythrura gouldiae) demonstrated a genetic incompatibility between head colour morphs, the effects of which...

The essential biodiversity variables (EBV) framework was developed primarily to improve the detection of significant changes in global biodiversity. Its application at national level must support county-specific policy and management needs as well as allowing comparisons of estimates of biodiversity change between countries and their aggregation fo...

Understanding genetic colour polymorphism has proved a major challenge, both in terms of the underlying genetic mechanisms and the evolutionarily forces maintaining such genetic variation. In this context, genetic differences in aggression or competitive-related traits may covary with the expression of alternative phenotypes, and affect the evoluti...

Manipulating resource availability to assess the strength and effects of resource limitation on an animal population is relatively straightforward, and thus, common in the scientific literature. Resource quality, however, is rarely manipulated, as this requires a priori knowledge of a relationship between some measurable variation in the resource a...

Gouldian Erythrura gouldiae and Long‐tailed Finches Poephila acuticauda are morphologically and ecologically similar sympatric species, for which social dominance relationships are likely to determine access to critical limiting resources. Building on previous research showing that Long‐tailed Finches dominate competition for nest‐sites, I staged d...

The Gouldian Finch (Erythrura gouldiae) has experienced significant decline in population and the extent of its range over the past 40 years, which has generally been attributed to the availability of suitable foraging habitat. Less research, however, has investigated the suitability or availability of breeding habitat of the species. Gouldian Finc...

1. Interspecific interference competition for nest-sites among cavity-nesting birds can have important effects on reproductive fitness and the distribution of competing species. 2. We observed interference at nest-sites in free-living populations of the endangered Gouldian finch (Erythrura gouldiae) and sympatric long-tailed finch (Poephila acutica...

Determining the relative access of a species to critical limiting resources requires knowledge of the spectrum of their resource utilisation (niche space) and that of potential competitors, and the frequency distribution of resources in the environment. We used this theoretical framework to assess the relative access to nesting sites and the potent...

Finding reliable ways of assessing female mate choice is an essential prerequisite to understanding variation in female preferences and its impact on sexual selection. The zebra finch, Taeniopgyia guttata, is a classic avian model species for investigating mate choice and sexual selection, but to date virtually all work has been carried out using d...