This study investigated aspects of male and female reproductive success in a widespread, keystone dry-rainforest species, Ficus rubiginosa, the Rusty Fig. The primary aim of the study was to determine if climate change was impacting on reproductive success in F. rubiginosa and/or was likely to impact in the future. Four key questions relevant to plant population ecology in fragmented landscapes are addressed: Question 1. What impacts do climatic variation and fig-population fragmentation have on flowering and fruiting phenology in F. rubiginosa trees growing in a temperate, seasonal environment? Question 2. What impacts do climatic variation and fig-population fragmentation have on pollinator dispersal among F. rubiginosa trees and, if there are impacts, what are the consequences for pollen dispersal and fruit set? Question 3. What impacts do climatic variation and fig-population fragmentation have on frugivore visitation to F. rubiginosa and, if there are impacts, what are the consequences for seed dispersal? Question 4. What have the long-term patterns of dispersal and range extension by F. rubiginosa been in eastern Australia? Field work concentrated in the western half of F. rubiginosa's range in northern New South Wales, Australia. Four key areas of population ecology relating to phenology, pollination success, avian visitation and genetic variation were addressed. Environmental factors impacting on FF. rubiginosa's fitness in these four areas were identified and measured over a three-year period between January 2014 and January 2017. Further field work was conducted over the 3,000 km range of the species in July to October 2015 to collect genetic samples for Next Generation Sequencing and Single Nucleotide Polymorphism analysis to determine current and historic patterns of genetic variation across the species' fragmented distribution.

Major findings from this study were that phenology was impacted by temperature and rainfall. Low winter temperatures caused syconium development to slow down and go into stasis. Low rainfall stimulated the extension of male and female phenophases in trees through staggered syconium development, which increased reproductive assurance but reduced the number of ripe fruit on trees, thereby reducing a tree's attractiveness to frugivore seed-dispersers. Pollination success was reduced in drier parts of F. rubiginosa's range compared with that in more mesic environments. Extreme fragmentation - single trees - provided pollinators with refuge from parasitoids leading to increased male and female fitness in F. rubiginosa. Retention of unpollinated fruit on trees increased female fitness by increasing apparent crop size and attracting greater visitation by frugivores. Ficus rubiginosa was a pivotal and keystone resource for twice as many insectivorous bird species as frugivore species. Drier climates during the last ice age led to contraction of F. rubiginosa populations to four probable refugia, scattered over 22° (2,500 km) of latitude. Dry coastal zones that functioned as biogeographic barriers to gene flow during the last ice age have functioned as corridors facilitating dispersal more recently.

Signals of early population decline can be difficult to recognise in long-lived species such as large Ficus trees. However, several factors that impacted on pollination success and seed production in F. rubiginosa were identified during this project. Among these factors was fire, projected to keep increasing in frequency and intensity under the influence of climate change. Flower and fruit production was delayed by up to five years and more in many trees across the study area, as trees recovered (resprouted) after fire. Lower rainfall resulted in slower and reduced fruit production, and fruit that were produced were smaller and had fewer seeds. Smaller crops of ripe fruit in trees attracted lower avian visitation and, hence, reduced seed dispersal. Lower pollination success was recorded during drier conditions. And gene flow was obstructed by dry areas between populations. All of these factors and events point to reductions in fitness and early population decline. They are all consequences of deteriorating rainfall and increasing temperatures, which have been experienced across the study area over the last few decades. Further decline is likely and local population extinctions are possible in those parts of F. rubiginosa's range where climate change results in further reductions in rainfall and ongoing increases in temperature. This will negatively impact on the communities F. rubiginosa lives in and on ecosystem services the affected plants and animals provide within the local and surrounding environments.

Ficus rubiginosa would be an important species to use in restoration as it provides a year-round food resource for frugivores and, as found in this study, a year-round and unique food resource for insectivorous woodland birds, many of which are in decline in this region and others globally.

'Changing Livelihood Strategies in the Conservation Reserves of the Western Ghats' explores changes in the livelihood strategies used by communities living in the forests of the Uttara Kannada region located within the Western Ghats hotspot in southern India. Conservation targets in the area have resulted in large tracts of Uttara Kannada's forests to be included into IUCN Category VI Protected Areas, called Conservation Reserves. Complex interactions between resource management policies and local socio-economic, political, environmental, institutional structures, and regulatory processes threaten the livelihood security of the many population groups that live here and are heavily dependent on forest resources for their livelihoods. Evidence from historical archives and from the communities themselves, indicate the exploitation of Uttara Kannada's forests by successive forest administration regimes from colonial and post-colonial times, in the process, displacing livelihoods and driving many sections of the community into landlessness and poverty. The recognition of the Western Ghats as a biodiversity hotspot can be perceived as a repeat of this trend, but from a conservation perspective.

This study set out to examine livelihood changes in the forests of Uttara Kannada and to document any changes in access to livelihood assets that have traditionally been available to forest-dwelling households in the forests of the Aghanashini LTM Conservation Reserve and the Bedthi Conservation Reserve. In the process, the study compiled a detailed profile of Uttara Kannada's forest-dwelling society, describing local communities and their traditional forest use and land-use patterns, their livelihood characteristics, their political and social organisation, and the historical legacy of the region. The forest dependence patterns, and the socio-ecological and socio-political background of the local communities have an important bearing on the livelihood strategies they use. This study found changes in the livelihood strategies used by households in the forests of the ACR and BCR with loss of some and addition of other strategies to their livelihood portfolios. The livelihood assets that forest households traditionally had access to, had also changed over the years. Although NTFP extraction continued to be the most used livelihood strategy, the levels of involvement and income earned from it varied. Besides NTFP extraction, a range of diverse livelihood strategies were also used by households to earn income. The study also shows how caste, 9 gender and social status, continue to mediate livelihood activities in the forests of Uttara Kannada, where each caste or endogamous group occupies specific 'ecological niches' that they have traditionally inherited. These factors were seen to dictate each household's access to livelihood assets and thereby to the livelihood strategies they used to earn income. Importantly, narrow, heavily forest-dependent, livelihood portfolios, were seen to limit the household's ability to build livelihood capital, thus increasing its vulnerability, and often driving it out of its traditional livelihood activities and into casual manual labour. The study concludes that the land-use and resource-use regulations passed by village-level institutions were influenced by the heavy conservation focus prevailing in these forests, which contributed to livelihood loss and deprivation of households from landless and minority communities. However, for other sections of the community, access to livelihood improvement, and livelihood development opportunities encouraged livelihood diversification and a stronger engagement in the local economy.

The Sustainable Livelihood Framework has been a reliable tool at representing the real time impacts or benefits of local institutions, processes, and regulations on local livelihoods. Given the paucity of livelihood research in the study area, this thesis makes useful empirical and methodological contributions towards the evidence base of forest livelihood impacts in conservation locations. This study also concludes that poverty is an overarching reality in the Conservation Reserves of Uttara Kannada, where some sections of the community have experienced livelihood loss leading to deprivation and poverty. While, biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation are both important goals demanding attention, particularly in the threatened biodiversity-rich, Western Ghats hotspot, improving synergies between forest-based livelihoods, conservation and poverty alleviation becomes a priority.

Vertebrates use different reproductive strategies and consequently, diverse forms of parental care to improve offspring survival and thus their lifetime reproductive success. A relatively rare form of reproduction and parental care, which is known as cooperative breeding, evolves when individuals other than breeders (i.e. helpers) provide alloparental care to offspring. Given that any form of parental care is likely costly, helping to raise the offspring of others appears to be against the expectations of natural selection theory. Hence, factors that underpin the evolution and maintenance of cooperative breeding have attracted much research attention during the last few decades.

In this thesis, I describe my research on the dynamics of cooperative breeding and the importance of various determinants for its evolution in a native Australian passerine bird, the noisy miner (Manorina melanocephala). Why do some individuals assist in raising the offspring of others? Do breeding females choose their nest site to maximise the amount of aid received from helpers? How does a helper's sex or the presence of extra-pair (EP) mating influence the dynamics of helping? Does acoustic communication allow helpers to aid young in pathways that don't involve provisioning? These questions are some of the important aspects of cooperative breeding that were addressed using data collected from three years of field observations of colour-marked populations, combined with molecular analyses.

Female noisy miners tended to select areas close to open and fragmented patches for their nest site, a selection that consequently may facilitate more efficient foraging, nest defence and accessibility of nests for potential helpers. Overall, in this system, kinship or relatedness between individuals appeared to be the main reason why helpers aided offspring, as they increased their provisioning rate with increased genetic relatedness to breeding pairs. Therefore helpers primarily gain indirect fitness benefits through helping their relatives. Despite this, unrelated helpers also provisioned young, so other types of direct benefits, such as group augmentation, might also be accrued by helpers and play a role in maintaining cooperatively breeding in this species.

In this system, helping behaviour seems to be closely associated with sex-related dispersal patterns and an overall male-biased population sex ratio, with helpers consisting of mainly philopatric males (93 % helpers). Given this, despite investment in male-biased broods appearing to offer higher fitness returns for both breeders and helpers, brood sex ratio did not influence the amount of food provided at a nest by either the breeding pair or their helper contingent. This finding could be due to an inability of provisioners to recognise nestling sex, or potential future costs that might be imposed upon philopatric males such as increased competition for resources and/or mating opportunities from offspring once they reach maturity.

Further, I examined the genetic mating system of this species and showed that: a) there is tendency to avoid copulation with genetically related individuals, with 86% of social breeding pairs being significantly less related to each other than the general population and b) 27% of broods contained extra-pair offspring and 14% of nestling were sired by males other than the putative breeding male. However, extra-pair mating occurred independent of the degree of relatedness between members of the social breeding pair at a given nest. In addition, extra-pair mating did not lead to greater helper recruitment at nests, as successful extra-pair males did not provision at nests after they obtained paternity.

Finally, I show that noisy miner nestlings not only respond effectively to intraspecific alarms calls by ceasing vocalisation production, but also might have the ability to differentiate between terrestrial and aerial alarm calls of conspecifics, as nestlings suppressed begging signals for longer in response to terrestrial rather than aerial alarm calls broadcast near the nest. This demonstrates a possible novel form by which helpers aid offspring, as noisy miners routinely give different alarm calls to various threats and can warn nestlings of the presence and the type of danger.