Population and spatial dynamics of desert bighorn sheep in Grand Canyon during an outbreak of respiratory pneumonia
Clinton W. Epps, P. Brandon Holton, Ryan J. Monello, Rachel S. Crowhurst, Sarah Mccrimmon Gaulke, William Michael Janousek, Tyler G. Creech, Tabitha A. Graves
2024, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution (12)
Introduction: Terrestrial species in riverine ecosystems face unique constraints leading to diverging patterns of population structure, connectivity, and disease dynamics. Desert bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis nelsoni) in Grand Canyon National Park, a large native population in the southwestern USA, offer a unique opportunity to evaluate population patterns and processes in a...
Application of normalized radar backscatter and hyperspectral data to augment rangeland vegetation fractional classification
Matthew B. Rigge, Brett Bunde, Kory Postma, Simon Oliver, Norman Mueller
2024, Remote Sensing (16)
Rangeland ecosystems in the western United States are vulnerable to climate change, fire, and anthropogenic disturbances, yet classification of rangeland areas remains difficult due to frequently sparse vegetation canopies that increase the influence of soils and senesced vegetation, the overall abundance of senesced vegetation, heterogeneity of...
Mammalian lures monitored with time-lapse cameras increase detection of pythons and other snakes
Marina E. McCampbell, McKayla M. Spencer, Kristen Hart, Gabrielle Link, Andrew J. Watson, Robert A. McCleery
2024, PeerJ (12)
BackgroundEnhancing detection of cryptic snakes is critical for the development of conservation and management strategies; yet, finding methods that provide adequate detection remains challenging. Issues with detecting snakes can be particularly problematic for some species, like the invasive Burmese python (Python bivittatus) in the Florida Everglades.MethodsUsing multiple survey...
A spatial machine learning model developed from noisy data requires multiscale performance evaluation: Predicting depth to bedrock in the Delaware River Basin, USA
Phillip J. Goodling, Kenneth Belitz, Paul E. Stackelberg, Brandon J. Fleming
2024, Environmental Modelling & Software (179)
Spatial machine learning models can be developed from observations with substantial unexplainable variability, sometimes called ‘noise’. Traditional point-scale metrics (e.g., R2) alone can be misleading when evaluating these models. We present a multi-scale performance evaluation (MPE) using two additional scales (distributional and geostatistical). We apply the MPE framework to predictions...
Dissolved arsenic concentrations in surface waters within the upper portions of the Klamath River Basin, Oregon and California
Marie Noele Croteau, Brent R. Topping, Rick A. Carlson
2024, Scientific Investigations Report 2024-5029
Arsenic toxicity is an environmental health problem. Levels of arsenic in surface waters at some locations in the Klamath River Basin in southern Oregon and northern California can exceed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standard for drinking water. There are both anthropogenic and natural sources of arsenic. The Klamath...
Distribution, abundance, and breeding activities of the Least Bell's Vireo at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California—2020 annual report
Suellen Lynn, Michelle Treadwell, Barbara E. Kus
2024, Open-File Report 2024-1009
Executive SummaryThe purpose of this report is to provide the Marine Corps with an annual summary of abundance, breeding activity, demography, and habitat use of endangered Least Bell’s Vireos (Vireo bellii pusillus) at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton (MCBCP, or Base). Surveys for the Least Bell's Vireo were conducted...
Microbial communities in standing dead trees in ghost forests are largely aerobic, saprophytic, and methanotrophic
Mary Jane Carmichael, Melinda Martinez, Suzanna L. Bräuer, Marcelo Ardón
2024, Current Microbiology (81)
Standing dead trees (snags) are recognized for their influence on methane (CH4) cycling in coastal wetlands, yet the biogeochemical processes that control the magnitude and direction of fluxes across the snag-atmosphere interface are not fully elucidated. Herein, we analyzed microbial communities and fluxes at one height...
Fish assemblage and functional trait responses to small-dam removal
Luke Max Bower, C. A. Marion, M. K. Scott, Kevin Kubach, Andrew Gelder
2024, Freshwater Biology (69) 1043-1056
Dams are one of the greatest threats to freshwater biodiversity and efforts to remove dams to restore riverine systems are increasing. However, dam-removal studies have primarily focused on taxonomic responses to large dam removals with little work on the functional trait responses of...
Solute export patterns across the contiguous USA
Dustin W. Kincaid, Kristen L. Underwood, Scott Douglas Hamshaw, L. Li, Erin C. Seybold, Bryn Stewart, Donna M. Rizzo, Ijaz Ul Haq, Julia N. Perdrial
2024, Hydrological Processes (38)
Understanding controls on solute export to streams is challenging because heterogeneous catchments can respond uniquely to drivers of environmental change. To understand general solute export patterns, we used a large-scale inductive approach to evaluate concentration–discharge (C–Q) metrics across catchments spanning a broad range of catchment attributes and hydroclimatic drivers. We...
Did steam boost the height and growth rate of the giant Hunga eruption plume?
Larry G. Mastin, Alexa R. Van Eaton, Shane Cronin
2024, Bulletin of Volcanology (86)
The eruption of Hunga volcano on 15 January 2022 produced a higher plume and faster-growing umbrella cloud than has ever been previously recorded. The plume height exceeded 58 km, and the umbrella grew to 450 km in diameter within 50 min. Assuming an umbrella thickness of...
Conservation genetics of the endangered California Freshwater Shrimp (Syncaris pacifica): Watershed and stream networks define gene pool boundaries
Abdul M. Ada, Amy G. Vandergast, Robert N. Fisher, Darren Fong, Andrew J. Bohonak
2024, Conservation Genetics (25) 1021-1033
Understanding genetic structure and diversity among remnant populations of rare species can inform conservation and recovery actions. We used a population genetic framework to spatially delineate gene pools and estimate gene flow and effective population sizes for the endangered California Freshwater Shrimp Syncaris pacifica. Tissues of 101...
Reproducing age variability in grass carp egg samples from the lower Sandusky River, Ohio, USA, using an egg-drift model
David Soong, P. Ryan Jackson, Patrick M. Kocovsky, Lori Morrison, Tatiana Garcia, Santiago Santacruz, Cindy Chen, Zhenduo Zhu, Holly Susan Embke
2024, Journal of Great Lakes Research (50)
Invasive grass carp (Ctenopharyngodon idella) are currently reproducing in several tributaries to Lake Erie and threatening the Great Lakes ecosystem and fisheries. Grass carp are pelagic river spawners whose fertilized eggs drift downstream from the spawning site, developing as they drift. Variability in spawning time and location together with nonuniform...
Identifying new invasive plants in the face of climate change: A focus on sleeper species
A.C. O'Uhuru, Toni Lyn Morelli, Annette E. Evans, J.D. Salva, B.A. Bradley
2024, Biological Invasions (26) 2989-3001
Sleeper populations are established populations of introduced species whose population growth is limited by one or more abiotic or biotic conditions. Sleeper populations pose an invasion risk if a change in those limiting conditions, such as climate change, enables population growth and invasion. With thousands of established introduced species, it...
Widespread occupancy of the endangered northern myotis on northeastern Atlantic Coastal Plain islands
Samantha Hoff, Brittany A. Mosher, Mandy Watson, Luanne Johnson, Elizabeth Olson, Danielle O’Dell, Casey J. Pendergast, Daniel A. Bogan, Carl J. Herzog, Wendy Christine Turner
2024, Endangered Species Research (54) 141-153
Northern myotis Myotis septentrionalis are one of the bat species most affected by white-nose syndrome (WNS), and disease-induced declines may cause compounding effects when combined with other threats such as habitat loss and fragmentation. Recent evidence suggests that peripheral populations are persisting in post-WNS years; however, the environmental factors that...
Validation of a real-time quaking-induced conversion (RT-QuIC) assay protocol to detect chronic wasting disease using rectal mucosa of naturally infected, pre-clinical white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus)
Robert B. Piel III, Susan E. Veneziano, Eric M. Nicholson, Daniel P. Walsh, Aaron D. Lomax, Tracy A. Nichols, Christopher M. Seabury, David A. Schneider
2024, PLoS ONE (19)
Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a fatal prion disease of cervids spreading across North America. More effective mitigation efforts may require expansion of the available toolkit to include new methods that provide earlier antemortem detection, higher throughput, and less expense than current immunohistochemistry (IHC) methods. The rectal mucosa near the...
ENSO-based outlook of droughts and agricultural outcomes in Afghanistan
Shraddhanand Shukla, Fahim Zaheer, Andrew Hoell, Weston Anderson, Harikishan Jayanthi, Greg Husak, Donghoon Lee, Brian Barker, Shahriar Pervez, Kimberly Slinski, Christina Justice, James Rowland, Amy McNally, Michael Budde, James Verdin
2024, Weather and Climate Extremes (45)
Drought is one of the key drivers of food insecurity in Afghanistan, which is among the most food insecure countries in the world. In this study, we build on previous research and seek to answer the central question: “What is the influence of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on drought outlooks and agricultural...
Mechanisms by which marine heatwaves impact seabirds
John F. Piatt, Mayumi L. Arimitsu, Sarah Ann Thompson, Rob Suryan, Rory Wilson, Kyle Elliott, W.J. Sydeman
2024, MEPS (737) 1-8
Marine heatwaves (MHWs) are characterized by periods of extreme warming of local to basin-scale marine habitat. Effects of MHWs on some seabirds (e.g. mass die-offs) are well documented, but mechanisms by which seabirds respond to MHWs remain poorly understood. Following from a symposium at the 3rd World Seabird Conference, this Theme...
A decade-long study demonstrates that a population of invasive sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) can be controlled by introducing sterilized males
Nicholas S. Johnson, Sean Alois Lewandoski, Aaron K. Jubar, Matthew J Symbal, Solomon M Benson, Gale A Bravener, Jessica M. Barber, Michael J. Siefkes
2024, Scientific Reports (14)
The release of sterilized insects to control pest populations has been used successfully during the past 6 decades, but application of the method in vertebrates has largely been overlooked or met with failure. Here, we demonstrate for the first time in fish, that a small population...
Treed Gaussian processes for animal movement modeling
Camille J. Rieber, Trevor J. Hefley, David A. Haukos
2024, Ecology and Evolution (14)
Wildlife telemetry data may be used to answer a diverse range of questions relevant to wildlife ecology and management. One challenge to modeling telemetry data is that animal movement often varies greatly in pattern over time, and current continuous-time modeling approaches to handle such...
A genomic hotspot of diversifying selection and structural change in the hoary bat (Lasiurus cinereus)
Robert S. Cornman
2024, PeerJ (12)
BackgroundPrevious work found that numerous genes positively selected within the hoary bat (Lasiurus cinereus) lineage are physically clustered in regions of conserved synteny. Here I further validate and expand on those finding utilizing an updated L. cinereus genome assembly and additional bat species as well as other tetrapod outgroups.MethodsA chromosome-level...
Broad-scale changes in lesser prairie-chicken habitat
Megan P. Vhay, David A. Haukos, Daniel S. Sullins, Mindy B. Rice
2024, PLoS ONE (19)
Lesser prairie-chicken (Tympanuchus pallidicinctus) populations of in the Sand Sagebrush Prairie Ecoregion of southwest Kansas and southeast Colorado, USA, have declined sharply since the mid-1980s. Decreased quality and availability of habitat are believed to be the main drivers of declines. Our objective was to reconstruct broad-scale...
Effects of telemetry collars on two free-roaming feral equid species
Kathryn A. Schoenecker, Sarah King, Jacob D. Hennig, Mary C. Cole, J. Derek Scasta, Jeffrey L. Beck
2024, PLoS ONE (19)
There are two species of free-roaming feral equids in North America: horses (Equus caballus) and donkeys or “burros” (E. asinus). Both species were introduced as domestic animals to North America in the early 1500s and currently inhabit rangelands across the western United States, Canada, and all continents except Antarctica. Despite their...
Temporally dense monitoring of pathogen occurrence at four drinking-water well sites – Insights and Implications
James F. Walsh, Randall J. Hunt, Anita C. Anderson, David W. Owens, Nancy Rice
2024, Water Research (259)
Yearlong, event based, microbiological and chemical sampling was conducted at four public water supply well sites spanning a range of geologic settings and well depths to look for correlation between precipitation events and microbial occurrence. Near-continuous monitoring using autosamplers occurred just before, during, and after...
Multinational evaluation of genetic diversity indicators for the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework
Alicia Mastretta-Yanes, Jessica M. da Silva, Catherine E. Grueber, Luis Castillo-Reina, Viktoria Koppa, Brenna R. Forester, W. Chris Funk, Myriam Heuertz, Fumiko Ishihama, Rebecca Jordan, Joachim Mergeay, Ivan Paz-Vinas, Victor Julio Rincon-Parra, Maria Alejandra Rodriguez-Morales, Libertad Arredondo-Amezcua, Gaelle Brahy, Matt DeSaix, Lily Durkee, Ashley Hamilton, Margaret E. Hunter, Austin Koontz, Iris Lang, Maria Camila Latorre-Cardenas, Tanya Latty, Alexander Llanes-Quevedo, Anna J. MacDonald, Meg Mahoney, Caitlin Miller, Juan Francisco Ornelas, Santiago Ramirez-Barahona, Erica Robertson, Isa-Rita M. Russo, Metztli Arcila Santiago, Robyn E. Shaw, Glenn M. Shea, Per Sjogren-Gulve, Emma Suzuki Spence, Taylor Stack, Sofia Suarez, Akio Takenaka, Henrik Thurfjell, Sheela P. Turbek, Marlien van der Merwe, Fleur Visser, Ana Wegier, Georgina Wood, Eugenia Zarza, Linda Laikre, Sean M. Hoban
2024, Ecology Letters (27)
Under the recently adopted Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, 196 Parties committed to reporting the status of genetic diversity for all species. To facilitate reporting, three genetic diversity indicators were developed, two of which focus on processes contributing to genetic diversity conservation: maintaining genetically distinct populations and ensuring populations are large...
How to select an objective function using information theory
Timothy O. Hodson, Thomas M. Over, Smith Tyler, Lucy A. Marshall
2024, Water Resources Research (60)
In machine learning or scientific computing, model performance is measured with an objective function. But why choose one objective over another? According to the information-theoretic paradigm, the “best” objective function is whichever minimizes information loss. To evaluate different objectives, transform them into likelihoods. The ratios of these...
