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Hollow-bearing trees are keystone structures in many ecosystems worldwide and they play critical habitat roles for a vast array of fauna through providing denning and/or nesting sites. We quantified empirical relationships between the diameter of hollow-bearing trees and probability of occupancy of these trees by cavity-dependent arboreal marsupials in the Mountain Ash (Eucalyptus regnans) forests of the Central Highlands of Victoria, south-eastern Australia. We also quantified the effects of other variables such as stand age and elevation on tree occupancy. Finally, we compared the diameter of occupied and unoccupied hollow-bearing trees with non-hollow-bearing trees in 77-year old forest that regenerated after fires in 1939 and which form the dominant age cohort of trees in our study region.

Hollow-bearing trees occupied by arboreal marsupials had a larger diameter than unoccupied hollow-bearing trees …