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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

Title
DataCite
Code
doi:10.4227/05/53B4D7C88A3DF
Codespace
http://dx.doi.org

Publisher

Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network
Building 1019, 80 Meiers Rd
Indooroopilly
QLD
4068
Australia
+61 7 3365 9097

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
N
S
E
W


Temporal extent

Time period
2010-01-04 2014-05-31
Maintenance and update frequency
Not planned
GCMD Science Keywords
  • FAUNA
  • ISLAND
  • TERRESTRIAL ECOSYSTEMS
  • MORTALITY
  • ANIMALS/INVERTEBRATES
ANZSRC Fields of Research
  • Invertebrate biology
TERN Parameter Vocabulary
  • sex
  • Unitless
  • x coordinate
  • Degree
  • y coordinate
  • Degree
  • thorax length
  • Millimetre
QUDT Units of Measure
  • Unitless
  • Degree
  • Degree
  • Millimetre
GCMD Horizontal Resolution Ranges
  • 10 km - < 50 km or approximately .09 degree - < .5 degree
GCMD Temporal Resolution Ranges
  • Daily - < Weekly
Australian Faunal Directory
  • Birgus_latro
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
Linkage
https://w3id.org/tern/static/cc-by/88x31.png

Title
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence
Alternate title
CC-BY
Edition
4.0
Website
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/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

Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network
Building 1019, 80 Meiers Rd
Indooroopilly
QLD
4068
Australia
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

Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network
Building 1019, 80 Meiers Rd
Indooroopilly
QLD
4068
Australia
+61 7 3365 9097

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

Code
10.5281/zenodo.5652221
Website
https://github.com/ternaustralia/TERN-ISO19115/releases/tag/v1.0

 
 

Overviews

Spatial extent

N
S
E
W


Keywords

ANZSRC Fields of Research
Invertebrate biology
GCMD Science Keywords
ANIMALS/INVERTEBRATES FAUNA ISLAND MORTALITY TERRESTRIAL ECOSYSTEMS

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Access to the portal
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Associated resources

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