Predicting habitat vulnerable to invasion: Diet and body condition of introduced chital deer (Axis axis) in the Australian dry tropics (Old ID 27884)

Chief Investigator

This project aims to detail the dietary richness of chital deer diet, and explore the association between individual dietary quality and body condition. This will be achieved utilising faecal sample DNA metabarcoding techniques to sequence and analyse the dietary items consumed by chital deer, in combination with faecal chromatography techniques to estimate dietary quality, and exploration of animal morphometric data to investigate the variance in body condition among individuals. My results will detail the dietary items that are associated with chital deer of higher body condition, and more importantly, the dominant vegetation communities that chital deer may utilise to facilitate further range expansion.

09 Nov 2022 - 09 Nov 2023

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