Variation in annual clutch phenology of desert tortoises (Gopherus morafkai) in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona
Jeffrey E. Lovich, Roy C. Averill-Murray, Mickey Agha, Joshua R. Ennen, Meaghan Austin
2017, Herpetologica (73) 313-322
The phenology of egg production and oviposition in organisms affects survival and development of neonates and thus, both offspring and maternal fitness. In addition, in organisms with environmental sex determination, clutch phenology can affect hatchling sex ratios with attendant effects on population demography. The rapid rate of contemporary climate change...
Bias correction of bounded location errors in presence-only data
Trevor J. Hefley, Brian M. Brost, Mevin Hooten
2017, Methods in Ecology and Evolution (8) 1566-1573
Location error occurs when the true location is different than the reported location. Because habitat characteristics at the true location may be different than those at the reported location, ignoring location error may lead to unreliable inference concerning species–habitat relationships.We explain how a transformation known in the...
Safari Science: Assessing the reliability of citizen science data for wildlife surveys
Cara Steger, Bilal Butt, Mevin Hooten
2017, Journal of Applied Ecology (54) 2053-2062
Protected areas are the cornerstone of global conservation, yet financial support for basic monitoring infrastructure is lacking in 60% of them. Citizen science holds potential to address these shortcomings in wildlife monitoring, particularly for resource-limited conservation initiatives in developing countries – if we can account for the...
Response of anurans to wetland restoration on a midwestern agriculture landscape
Paul E. Bartelt, Robert W. Klaver
2017, Journal of Herpetology (51) 504-514
Since the early 1990s, >5,000 ha of historic wetlands (and adjacent prairie) have been restored on the row-crop agricultural landscape of Winnebago County, Iowa, USA. From 2008–2011, we surveyed 22 of these sites for probabilities of occupancy and colonization by Boreal Chorus Frogs (BCF; Pseudacris maculata), Northern Leopard Frogs (NLF; Lithobates pipiens),...
Future scenarios of land change based on empirical data and demographic trends
Benjamin M. Sleeter, Tamara Wilson, Ethan Sharygin, Jason T. Sherba
2017, Earth's Future (5) 1068-1083
Changes in land use and land cover (LULC) have important and fundamental interactions with the global climate system. Top-down global scale projections of land use change have been an important component of climate change research; however, their utility at local to regional scales is often limited. The goal of this...
Thermal adaptation and phenotypic plasticity in a warming world: Insights from common garden experiments on Alaskan sockeye salmon
Morgan M. Sparks, Peter A. H. Westley, Jeffrey A. Falke, Thomas P. Quinn
2017, Global Change Biology (23) 5203-5217
An important unresolved question is how populations of coldwater-dependent fishes will respond to rapidly warming water temperatures. For example, the culturally and economically important group, Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.), experience site-specific thermal regimes during early development that could be disrupted by warming. To test for thermal local adaptation and heritable phenotypic...
A Bayesian method for assessing multiscalespecies-habitat relationships
Erica F. Stuber, Lutz F. Gruber, Joseph J. Fontaine
2017, Landscape Ecology (32) 2365-2381
ContextScientists face several theoretical and methodological challenges in appropriately describing fundamental wildlife-habitat relationships in models. The spatial scales of habitat relationships are often unknown, and are expected to follow a multi-scale hierarchy. Typical frequentist or information theoretic approaches often suffer under collinearity in multi-scale studies, fail...
Population trends, survival, and sampling methodologies for a population of Rana draytonii
Gary M. Fellers, Patrick M. Kleeman, David A.W. Miller, Brian J. Halstead
2017, Journal of Herpetology (51) 567-573
Estimating population trends provides valuable information for resource managers, but monitoring programs face trade-offs between the quality and quantity of information gained and the number of sites surveyed. We compared the effectiveness of monitoring techniques for estimating population trends of Rana draytonii (California Red-legged Frog) at Point Reyes National Seashore,...
Inland fisheries – Invisible but integral to the UN Sustainable Development Agenda for ending poverty by 2030
Abigail Lynch, I.G. Cowx, Etienne Fluet-Chouinard, S. M. Glaser, Sui C. Phang, T. Douglas Beard Jr., S. D. Bower, J.L. Brooks, David B. Bunnell, Julie Claussen, S. J. Cooke, Yu-Chun Kao, Kai Lorenzen, Bonnie Myers, Andrea J. Reid, J. J. Taylor, S. Youn
2017, Global Environmental Change (47) 167-173
The United Nations’ (UN) 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development defines the formidable challenge of integrating historically separate economic, social, and environmental goals into a unified ‘plan of action for people, planet, and prosperity.’ We highlight the substantial contribution inland fisheries can make towards preventing increased poverty and, in some cases,...
Mangrove ecosystems under climate change
T.C. Jennerjahn, E. Gilman, Ken W. Krauss, L.D. Lacerda, I. Nordhaus, E. Wolanski
2017, Book chapter, Mangrove Ecosystems: A Global Biogeographic Perspective
This chapter assesses the response of mangrove ecosystems to possible outcomes of climate change, with regard to the following categories: (i) distribution, diversity, and community composition, (ii) physiology of flora and fauna, (iii) water budget, (iv) productivity and remineralization, (v) carbon storage in biomass and sediments, and (vi) the filter...
Conservation status of an imperiled crayfish, Faxonius marchandi Hobbs, 1948 (Decapoda: Cambaridae)
Robert J. DiStefano, Daniel D. Magoulick, C.A. Flinders, Emily M. Imhoff
2017, Journal of Conservation Biology (37) 529-534
We summarize the distribution, ecology, threats, and conservation status of Faxonius marchandi (Hobbs, 1948), the Mammoth Spring crayfish, a limited-range endemic species to the Spring River drainage of Missouri and Arkansas, USA. The species is known from 51 locations on lower-order perennial and intermittent streams in only...
Efficacy of time-lapse photography and repeated counts abundance estimation for white-tailed deer populations
Allison Keever, Conor P. McGowan, Stephen S. Ditchkoff, S.A. Acker, J. Barry Grand, Chad H. Newbolt
2017, Mammal Research (62) 413-422
Automated cameras have become increasingly common for monitoring wildlife populations and estimating abundance. Most analytical methods, however, fail to account for incomplete and variable detection probabilities, which biases abundance estimates. Methods which do account for detection have not been thoroughly tested, and those that have been tested were compared to...
Evidence for density dependence in foraging and migratory behavior of a subtropical nearshore seabird
Juliet S. Lamb, Yvan G. Satge, Patrick G.R. Jodice
2017, Ecology and Evolution (7) 6469-6481
Density-dependent competition for food resources influences both foraging ecology and reproduction in a variety of animals. The relationship between colony size, local prey depletion, and reproductive output in colonial central-place foragers has been extensively studied in seabirds; however, most studies have focused on effects of intraspecific competition during the breeding...
Windows of susceptibility and consequences of early life exposures to 17β–estradiol on medaka (Oryzias latipes) reproductive success
Crystal S. D. Lee Pow, Kedamawit Tilahun, Kari Creech, J. Mac Law, W. Gregory Cope, Thomas J. Kwak, James A. Rice, D. Derek Aday, Seth W. Kullman
2017, Environmental Science & Technology (51) 5296-5305
Estrogens and estrogen mimics are commonly found in surface waters and are associated with deleterious effects in fish populations. Impaired fertility and fecundity in fish following chronic exposures to estrogens and estrogen mimics during critical windows in development are well documented. However, information regarding differential reproductive effects of exposure within...
Streamflow characteristics from modelled runoff time series: Importance of calibration criteria selection
Sandra Poole, Marc Vis, Rodney Knight, Jan Seibert
2017, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (21) 5443-5457
Ecologically relevant streamflow characteristics (SFCs) of ungauged catchments are often estimated from simulated runoff of hydrologic models that were originally calibrated on gauged catchments. However, SFC estimates of the gauged donor catchments and subsequently the ungauged catchments can be substantially uncertain when models are calibrated using traditional approaches based on...
Monogenea of fishes from the lagoon flats of Palmyra Atoll in the Central Pacific
Victor Manuel Vidal-Martinez, Lilia Catherinne Soler-Jimenez, Ma. Leopoldina Aguirre-Macedo, John Mclaughlin, Alejandra G. Jaramillo, Jenny C. Shaw, Anna James, Ryan F. Hechinger, Armand M. Kuris, Kevin D. Lafferty
2017, ZooKeys (713) 1-23
A survey of the monogeneans of fishes from the lagoon flats of Palmyra Atoll detected 16 species already reported from the Indo-West Pacific faunal region. A total of 653 individual fish from 44 species were collected from the sand flats bordering the lagoon of the atoll. Eighteen species of fish...
Evaluation of the Eureka Manta2 Water-Quality Multiprobe Sonde
Evan F. Tillman
2017, Open-File Report 2017-1118
Two Eureka Manta2 3.5 water-quality multiprobe sondes by Eureka Water Probes were tested at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Hydrologic Instrumentation Facility (HIF) against known standards over the sonde operating temperatures to verify the manufacturer’s stated accuracy specifications for pH, specific conductance (SC) at 25 degrees Celsius (°C), dissolved oxygen...
Acoustic tag detections of green sturgeon in the Columbia River and Coos Bay estuaries, Washington and Oregon, 2010–11
Hal C. Hansel, Jason G. Romine, Russell W. Perry
2017, Open-File Report 2017-1144
The Columbia River, in Washington and Oregon, and Coos Bay, in Oregon, are economically important shipping channels that are inhabited by several fishes protected under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Maintenance of shipping channels involves dredge operations to maintain sufficient in-channel depths to allow large ships to navigate the...
Free-ranging domestic cats (Felis catus) on public lands: estimating density, activity, and diet in the Florida Keys
Michael V. Cove, Beth Gardner, Theodore R. Simons, Roland Kays, Allan F. O’Connell
2017, Biological Invasions (20) 344
Feral and free-ranging domestic cats (Felis catus) can have strong negative effects on small mammals and birds, particularly in island ecosystems. We deployed camera traps to study free-ranging cats in national wildlife refuges and state parks on Big Pine Key and Key Largo in the Florida Keys, USA,...
Integrating the effects of salinity on the physiology of the eastern oyster, Crassostrea virginica, in the northern Gulf of Mexico through a Dynamic Energy Budget model
Romain Lavaud, Megan K. LaPeyre, Sandra M. Casas, C. Bacher, Jerome F. La Peyre
2017, Ecological Modelling (363) 221-233
We present a Dynamic Energy Budget (DEB) model for the eastern oyster, Crassostrea virginica, which enables the inclusion of salinity as a third environmental variable, on top of the standard foodr and temperature variables. Salinity changes have various effects on the physiology of oysters, potentially altering filtration and respiration rates, and...
Diet composition and provisioning rates of nestlings determine reproductive success in a subtropical seabird
Juliet S. Lamb, Patrick G.R. Jodice, Yvan G. Satge
2017, Marine Ecology Progress Series (581) 149-164
Understanding how both quality and quantity of prey affect the population dynamics of marine predators is a crucial step toward predicting the effects of environmental perturbations on population-level processes. The Junk Food Hypothesis, which posits that energetic content of prey species may influence reproductive capacity of marine top predators regardless...
Incorporating population viability models into species status assessment and listing decisions under the U.S. Endangered Species Act
Conor P. McGowan, Nathan Allan, Jeff Servoss, Shaula J. Hedwall, Brian Wooldridge
2017, Global Ecology and Conservation (12) 119-130
Assessment of a species' status is a key part of management decision making for endangered and threatened species under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Predicting the future state of the species is an essential part of species status assessment, and projection models can play an important role in developing predictions....
Recruitment phenology and pelagic larval duration in Caribbean amphidromous fishes
Augustin C. Engman, Thomas J. Kwak, Jesse R. Fischer
2017, Freshwater Science (36) 851-865
Amphidromous fishes are major components of oceanic tropical island stream ecosystems, such as those of the Caribbean island, Puerto Rico. Fishes with this life history face threats related to the requirement for connectivity between freshwater and marine environments during early life stages. Pelagic larval duration and recruitment phenology are 2...
Projecting species’ vulnerability to climate change: Which uncertainty sources matter most and extrapolate best?
Valerie Steen, Helen Sofaer, Susan K. Skagen, Andrea J. Ray, Barry R. Noon
2017, Ecology and Evolution (7) 8841-8851
Species distribution models (SDMs) are commonly used to assess potential climate change impacts on biodiversity, but several critical methodological decisions are often made arbitrarily. We compare variability arising from these decisions to the uncertainty in future climate change itself. We also test whether certain choices offer improved skill for extrapolating...
Estimating occupancy and abundance using aerial images with imperfect detection
Perry J. Williams, Mevin Hooten, Jamie N. Womble, Michael R. Bower
2017, Methods in Ecology and Evolution (8) 1679-1689
Species distribution and abundance are critical population characteristics for efficient management, conservation, and ecological insight. Point process models are a powerful tool for modelling distribution and abundance, and can incorporate many data types, including count data, presence-absence data, and presence-only data. Aerial photographic images are a natural tool...
