Squirrel glider home ranges near urban edges in eastern Australia

Conservation biology and landscape ecology are increasingly concerned with the effects of urbanization on wildlife, including the influences of habitat edges. This is particularly important in landscapes where a restriction on species home-range movements may reduce an animal's ability to access habitat resources, which ultimately reduces population viability. Despite this, there is limited information available on the movement behavior of wildlife at forest edges adjoining urban areas. We addressed this by radiotracking 30 squirrel gliders Petaurus norfolcensis in forest interiors and near road and residential edges in the fragmented urban landscape of south-east Queensland, Australia. An assessment of fixed-kernel (FK100% and FK50%) and minimum convex polygon (MCP100%) methods revealed that FK provided the most reliable home-range estimates. We applied a general linear model to test the influence of season, age and sex relative to habitat type (forest interiors, road edge, residential edge) on squirrel glider home-range size (FK95% & FK50%). We found that squirrel gliders living in interior habitats had significantly larger home ranges (7.07 ha +/- 0.43) than individuals living near roads (3.79 ha +/- 0.22) and residential areas (3.40 ha +/- 0.26). Similarly, home-range core areas (FK50%) were significantly larger in forest interiors (1.49 +/- 0.13 ha) than near road (0.78 +/- 0.07 ha) and residential edges (0.70 +/- 0.08 ha). We also found that squirrel gliders regularly cross narrow roads up to 20m wide and with a tree gap up to 15m to access adjacent vegetation, and are willing to utilize foraging resources in residential backyards. Changes in squirrel glider home ranges near edges identified in this study have implications for understanding how this species responds to urban edges, and we highlight important areas for future edge-related studies to correctly inform conservation and management.