Christmas Island National Park Robber Crab (Birgus latro) Road Kill Monitoring
The dataset contains records of Robber Crab (<i>Birgus latro</i>) mortality across Christmas Island, including location co-ordinates and details of sex and thoracic length. To manage the impact of road mortality on the species, this monitoring project is designed to assess spatial variation in road mortality. Basic data are collected at the site (sex, size, date, coordinates).
Simple
Identification info
- Date (Creation)
- 2014-05-31
- Date (Publication)
- 2014-07-03
- Date (Revision)
- 2025-12-11
- Edition
- 1.0
Identifier
Publisher
Author
Christmas Island National Park - Flakus, Samantha (Natural Resource Manager)
Parks Australia, Christmas Island, 6798, Western Australia, Australia
Christmas Island
Western Australia
6798
Australia
- Website
- https://www.tern.org.au/
- Purpose
- The Australian territory of Christmas Island lies in the Indian Ocean, 2,600 km northwest of Perth and 500 km south of the Indonesian capital, Jakarta. Christmas Island National Park is 85 km<sup>2</sup> in size and makes up almost two thirds of Christmas Island. The robber crab (<i>Birgus latro</i>) is categorized as Data Deficient on the IUCN Red List, and Christmas Island is thought to have one of the largest remaining populations. Robber crab road mortality appears to vary with changes in traffic density. Since the opening of the Christmas Island Immigration Detention Centre in late 2009, thousands of robber crabs have been run over on the island's roads in line with the increased population and vehicular traffic, especially at night. Park staff began marking the location of road kills using pink marker paint to denote the sites and make them visible in January 2010.
- Credit
- We at TERN acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians throughout Australia, New Zealand and all nations. We honour their profound connections to land, water, biodiversity and culture and pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.
- Status
- Completed
Point of contact
Christmas Island National Park - Flakus, Samantha (Natural Resource Manager)
Parks Australia, Christmas Island, 6798, Western Australia, Australia
Parks Australia
Christmas Island
Western Australia
6798
Australia
- Topic category
-
- Biota
Extent
- Description
- Monitoring occurs across the extent of Christmas Island, typically along roads and tracks. IBRA Region: Indian Tropical Islands
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Temporal extent
- Time period
- 2010-01-04 2014-05-31
- Maintenance and update frequency
- Not planned
- GCMD Science Keywords
- ANZSRC Fields of Research
- TERN Parameter Vocabulary
- QUDT Units of Measure
- GCMD Horizontal Resolution Ranges
- GCMD Temporal Resolution Ranges
- Australian Faunal Directory
- Keywords (Discipline)
-
- Robber Crab
- Coconut Crab
- Christmas Island National Park
- Human impacts on Natural Systems
Resource constraints
- Use limitation
- The Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license allows others to copy, distribute, display, and create derivative works provided that they credit the original source and any other nominated parties. Details are provided at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- File name
- 88x31.png
- File description
- CCBy Logo from creativecommons.org
- File type
- png
- Title
- Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence
- Alternate title
- CC-BY
- Edition
- 4.0
- Access constraints
- License
- Use constraints
- Other restrictions
- Other constraints
- TERN services are provided on an "as-is" and "as available" basis. Users use any TERN services at their discretion and risk. They will be solely responsible for any damage or loss whatsoever that results from such use including use of any data obtained through TERN and any analysis performed using the TERN infrastructure. <br />Web links to and from external, third party websites should not be construed as implying any relationships with and/or endorsement of the external site or its content by TERN. <br /><br />Please advise any work or publications that use this data via the online form at https://www.tern.org.au/research-publications/#reporting
- Other constraints
- Please cite this dataset as {Author} ({PublicationYear}). {Title}. {Version, as appropriate}. Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network. Dataset. {Identifier}.
Resource constraints
- Classification
- Unclassified
Distribution Information
- Distribution format
-
- NetCDF
Distributor
Distributor
- OnLine resource
- CINP_RobberCrab_mortality_dataset
Distribution Information
- Distribution format
-
Distributor
Distributor
Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network
Building 1019, 80 Meiers Rd, Indooroopilly, QLD, Australia, 4068
Indooroopilly
QLD
4068
Australia
- OnLine resource
- ro-crate-metadata.json
Resource lineage
- Statement
- 1) Survey Design: Parks staff began painting the road kills on an ad hoc basis when it was noted there was a significant increase in mortality in a short period of time. Organised data recording began later in order to preserve the record and enable the production of maps and other outputs. Unfortunately, data collections have not always included a measure of effort, such as the roads driven, and how often, and as a result any significant statistical analysis of the occurrence of fatalities has been difficult to ascertain. It is hoped that records of vehicle registrations and staff numbers at detention centres since late 2009 may reveal significant correlations with road mortalities and provide a reportable and publishable result. Vehicle traffic recording equipment has also been incorporated into the program to provide greater data on vehicular movements. 2) Road Survey: Parks staff travel all the main roads on the island twice a week, early in the day. They record the roads travelled on and the date. When a dead robber crab is found, it is removed from the road, a circle with a cross in it is painted on the spot where the crab was killed, so the kill is only recorded once. The following details are recorded: the sex of the individual; the thoracic length to the nearest mm with callipers; the date and the UTM of the site. Sex is determined by the presence of egg claspers (like small hairy legs) on the abdomens of females, which are absent in males. In many records an animal's size and sex can not be determined due to damage caused by road traffic.
- Hierarchy level
- Dataset
Reference System Information
- Reference system identifier
- EPSG/EPSG:3577
- Reference system type
- Geodetic Geographic 2D
Metadata
- Metadata identifier
-
urn:uuid/4f8292cc-1186-484a-a855-a1f0c8888361
- Title
- TERN GeoNetwork UUID
- Language
- English
- Character encoding
- UTF8
Point of contact
Type of resource
- Resource scope
- Dataset
- Metadata linkage
-
https://geonetwork.tern.org.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/4f8292cc-1186-484a-a855-a1f0c8888361
Point-of-truth metadata URL
- Date info (Creation)
- 2022-07-04T00:00:00.000000+00:00
- Date info (Revision)
- 2025-12-11T22:33:08.901521+00:00
Metadata standard
- Title
- ISO 19115-1:2014/AMD 1:2018 Geographic information - Metadata - Fundamentals
- Edition
- 1
Metadata standard
- Title
- ISO/TS 19115-3:2016
- Edition
- 1.0
Metadata standard
- Title
- ISO/TS 19157-2:2016
- Edition
- 1.0
- Title
- Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) Metadata Profile of ISO 19115-3:2016 and ISO 19157-2:2016
- Date (published)
- 2021
- Edition
- 1.0
Identifier
Overviews
Spatial extent
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Provided by
Associated resources
Not available