Christmas Island National Park Robber Crab (Birgus latro) Road Kill Monitoring

For detailed ecological metadata and source data see AEKOS (http://www.aekos.org.au/dataset/115022) 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 km2 in size and makes up almost two thirds of Christmas Island. The robber crab (Birgus latro) is categorised 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. Basic data are collected at the site (sex, size, date, coordinates). To manage the impact of road mortality on the species, this monitoring project is designed to assess: spatial variation in road mortality across the island; temporal variation in road mortality; the relationship between traffic levels and mortality; and size and sex relationships.