Fiona Scarff

Comparative Ecology Group, Department of Biological Sciences
Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia.
Tel: +612 9850 8194
fscarff  bio.mq.edu.au

Research Interests

  • How much do single species influence the way whole ecosystems function?
  • How can we predict these effects?

Current research at Macquarie

  •  Wildfires have a powerful influence on many ecosystems, shaping plant and animal communities as well as the carbon and nitrogen cycles. Plant species vary widely in their flammability, so they can change the intensity and frequency of fire. What is it about some plants that makes them more flammable – how much difference does it really make to wildfire behaviour – and how do these traits relate to other characteristics that determine where different species flourish?

Postgraduate research at Murdoch

  •  There are too many kinds of organisms to be able to study and manage each; yet loss of a single species can sometimes lead to dramatic ecosystem change. What proportion of the species in a community havelarge and unique impacts? I asked this question in a forest bird fauna and in the community of micro-organisms in a waste treatment pond. 
  • In the treatment pond, the answer was ‘none’. Removing a single species never altered pond function, because the remaining community contained other species with similar impacts. This ‘redundancy’ is valuable because it underwrites the ecosystem’s function against the impact of future extinctions.
  • In the forest, there was also a large amount of overlap in the activities of many species. But around 16% of bird species foraged in unique ways that were unlikely to be replaced by   the remaining fauna.

Publications

  • Scarff, F. R. and M. Westoby (2006). Leaf litter flammability in some semi-arid Australian woodlands. Functional Ecology, 20: 745-752.
  • Scarff, F. R. and J. S. Bradley (2006). Invertebrate prey of the bark-foraging insectivore Phascogale tapoatafa: distribution of biomass amongst alternative foraging substrates within south-western Australian woodlands. Australian Journal of Zoology, 54: 335-341.
  • Scarff, F. R. and S.Duus (2006). South-western Australia: winds of change. In search of excellence: exemplary forest management in the Asia Pacific region. Asia Pacific Forestry Commission, Bangkok.
  • Scarff, F. R. and M.A. Kemp (2003). Mathematics for chemistry students. Murdoch University, Perth, Australia.
  • Scarff, F. R. (2002). Predicting the integrity of ecosystems in the face of species loss. PhD Thesis, Murdoch University, Perth, Australia.
  • Scarff, F. R. and J. S. Bradley (2002). Ecosystem function and species loss – a microcosm study. Journal of Biogeography, 29: 641-651.
  • Scarff, F. R., S.G. Rhind and J.S. Bradley (1998). Diet and foraging behaviour of brush-tailed phascogales Phascogale tapoatafa in the jarrah forest of south-western Australia. Wildlife Research, 25:511-526.
  • Scarff, F. R. (1996). Nutritional ecology of the brush-tailed phascogale Phascogale tapoatafa tapoatafa (Marsupialia: Dasyuridae). Honours thesis, Murdoch University, Perth, Australia.

Last updated January 2007