Results - Updated September 2008

West and East go their own ways.

Foxes from Western Australia are genetically distinct from those in the eastern states, and this distinction is strong evidence that there is little or no fox movement across the central deserts (Nullabor). No similar barriers have been detected within Westen or Eastern Australia, although we have not begun to examine the fine scale effects of landscape features.

This pattern is interesting because historically we know that foxes did migrate across the Nullabor desert in the early 1900s. It may be that they were able to do this more easily than at present because rabbits were in plague proportions at that time and foxes effectively "surfed" a wave of rabbits across the country. The subsequent decline of rabbits with the introduction of myxamatosis may have left foxes "stranded" on the east and western sides of the continent, where they have been evolving independently for around 100 years.

While this information may not directly be of use to day to day fox management because an "eastern" and "western" management unit are too large to be practical, it would have implications for how disease outbreaks might spread across the country.

The figure below summarises the east-west genetic distinction. In it, each fox (~3500 in total) is represented by a thin vertical bar and individuals are spread along the bottom axis of the figure. Each bar is divided into green and red coloured segments and the relative size of the green or red segment indicates the "westerness" or "easterness" respectively of that fox. You can see a sharp divide as you go left to right on the figure where predominantly western foxes become predominantly eastern. This change corresponds exactly with the ordering of the individuals, where the first 1700 individuals from the left were from WA, and the remainder from eastern states.

Stay tuned for more detailed analyses.

Progress so far.

Over 3500 fox samples have been returned! As you can see from the distribution map, the coverage of Australia is excellent, and this should make the genetic analysis very powerful.

A sincere thankyou to all those who have returned samples. The response has been excellent, but unfortunately has meant that progress with the analysis has been slower than expected. Please bear with us. We are as keen to see the results as you are, and will endeavour to keep you informed as they become available.

In the meantime, you may like to have a closer look at the samples that have been sent in with Google Earth (free at http://earth.google.com/). If you click here you can download a file (55KB) containing the locations and collectors for most of the samples. If you open the file in Google Earth you can explore the landscapes in which they were collected. Please let us know if you find any glaring errors!

Also, please let us know if you would like the locations of your own samples not to be displayed in this way.

A higher resolution image is available here (156kb).

Progress in the laboratory has been steady, and we now have a set of DNA markers ready for use on the samples (see below). Interestingly, foxes in Australia appear to show plenty of genetic variation, despite the population bottleneck that they experienced upon introduction. Presumably the population grew fast enough and big enough that it has both maintained much of the variation present in the founding individuals, and generated some of its own through mutation.

The genotypes of two foxes from Western Australia. Each colour represents a different genetic marker ("locus"), and an individual will have either one or two versions (peaks along the horizontal axis) for each marker - one inherited from its mother and the other from its father.

In other news, we have received additional funding from the National Feral Animals Control Program (Federal Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) to extend the initial Western Australian research to the rest of Australia (http://www.maff.gov.au/releases/06/06092pm.htm). If we can achieve similar coverage in the remaining states we will have the basis for a truly national approach to fox management.