Northern Territory’s growing saltwater crocodile population gorging on nine times more prey than 50 years ago | Crocodiles

Increased crocodile in salt water in Northern region It has led to the creatures rolling in prey more than nine times than they were 50 years ago, as Apex Predators contributed to the important nutrients in the upper waterways.

Crocodile groups in saltwater have increased significantly in recent decades, from less than 3000 in 1971, when a fishing ban was offered to more than 100,000 animals today.

According to the new modeling, the NT population has consumed less than 20 kg of prey per square kilometer of wetlands in 1979, increasing to about 180 kg per square kilometer in 2019. The analysis was based on 50 years of NT government surveys that record the size of the crocodile and intensity.

This increase coincided with the transformation of water prey mostly, which includes 65 % of crocodile meals in 1979, to most of them wild animals in 2019, with animals such as brutal pigs, livestock and Asian Bavalo that make up 70 % of the diet.

As external animals (known as “cool cold”), crocodiles take a much less prey to predators, according to research leadership Professor Hamal Campbell of Charles Darwin University. He said: “Crocodiles eat about 10 % of the equal -sized lion food.”

But because it is focusing in much higher densities in Northern regionHe added that they have great effects. “With regard to the amount they eat and the amount that it secretes, it is incredibly high due to the biomass … It is equal or greater than many of the Earth’s thermal barriers [warm-blooded] Campbell said that the population, like lions on Sirinigiti or wolves in Yellowstone.

Researchers estimate that the upper population of crocodiles consumes about six brutal pigs per square kilometer of flood plains in wetlands every year, as researchers estimate.

In 50 years, the amount of nitrogen and phosphorous that was crocodile in the NT waterways increased 186 times and 56 times, respectively, as the study was found.

“They withdraw this from the Earth’s food network, which makes it really influential,” Campbell said. “They digest it, and they freeze all these nitrates and phosphates in the water.

“This will have significant effects on the productivity of plant plankton and animal animals, which are building blocks in the food chain.”

The ecosystem of crocodiles was discussed hot among researchers, as some had previously argued that there was A little evidence so far For its importance, such as identifying the ecosystem Stone species.

Research has mixed prey rates and the secretion of nutrients on the energy inputs required to grow in the numbers of crocodiles and vital mass in NT during the half -century period.

To detect animal habits over time, the researchers used the stable analogy analysis of historical and contemporary crocodile bones.

The research was published in the magazine The facts of the Royal Society B.