Aquatic biodiversity: consequences of massive modification of agricultural landscapes

We will examine how land-clearing and land-use change affect aquatic biota at whole-landscape scales, about which virtually nothing is known. We will compare landscapes in the one biogeographic region (box-ironbark region of north-central Victoria) having different degrees of vegetation clearance and change in distributions, types and permanence of aquatic habitats. We will use both ecological and population genetic tools to quantify effects on ecosystems and dispersal of taxa. We also will compare these results with existing studies-in these same landscapes-of impacts on terrestrial animals to provide a much more synthetic picture of effects of land-use change on biodiversity.