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Effective conservation for listed migratory species requires an understanding of how drivers of population decline vary spatially and temporally, as well as knowledge of range-wide connectivity between breeding and nonbreeding areas. Environmental conditions distant from breeding areas can have lasting effects...

With rapidly changing marine ecosystems, shifts in abundance and distribution are being documented for a variety of intertidal species. We examined two adjacent populations of Pacific razor clams (Siliqua patula) in lower Cook Inlet, Alaska. One population (east) supported a sport and personal use fishery, but...

The Pasteurellaceae family has been associated with fatal diseases in numerous avian species. Several new taxa within this family, including Bisgaard taxon 40, have been recently described in wild birds, but their genomic characteristics and pathogenicity are not well understood. We isolated Bisgaard taxon 40 from four species of seabirds, including...

Turtle body size is associated with demographic and other traits like mating success, reproductive output, maturity, and survival. As such, growth analyses are valuable for testing life history theory, demographic modeling, and conservation planning. Two important but unsettled research areas relate to growth after maturity and...

Arid and semiarid ecosystems drive year-to-year variability in the strength of the terrestrial carbon (C) sink, yet there is uncertainty about how soil C gains and losses contribute to this variation. To address this knowledge gap, we embedded C-depleted soil mesocosms, containing litter or biocrust C inputs, within an in...

White-nose syndrome (WNS) has caused dramatic declines of several cave-hibernating bat species in North America since 2006, which has increased the activity of non-susceptible species in some geographic areas or during times of night formerly occupied by susceptible species—indicative of disease-mediated competitive release (DMCR). Yet, this...

Remote sensing of flow conditions in stream channels could facilitate hydrologic data collection, particularly in large, inaccessible rivers. Previous research has demonstrated the potential to estimate flow velocities in sediment-laden rivers via particle image velocimetry (PIV). In this study, we introduce a new framework for also obtaining...

The distribution of plankton in the ocean is patchy across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. One type of oceanographic feature that exemplifies this patchiness is a ‘thin layer’. Thin layers are subsurface aggregations of plankton that range in vertical thickness from centimeters to a few meters,...

Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are adaptable systems that can solve problems that are difficult to describe with a mathematical relationship. They seek relationships between different types of datasets with their abilities to learn either with supervision or without. ANNs recognize patterns between input and output space...

Wildfire-induced changes to soil and vegetation promote runoff-generated debris flows in steep watersheds. Postfire debris flows are most commonly observed in steep watersheds during the first wet season following a wildfire, but it is unclear how long the elevated threat of debris flow persists and why debris-flow...

Stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) was first documented in 2014 near the Port of Miami, Florida, and has since spread north and south along Florida’s Coral Reef, killing large numbers of more than 20 species of coral and leading to the functional extinction of at least one...

The Mojave Desert region is in a critical position for assessing models of Laramide orogenesis, which is hypothesized to have initiated as one or more seamounts subducted beneath the Cretaceous continental margin. Geochronological and geochemical characteristics of Late Cretaceous magmatic products provide the opportunity to test the validity of Laramide...

In eastern North America, “tree bats” (Genera: Lasiurus and Lasionycteris) are highly susceptible to collisions with wind energy turbines and are known to fly offshore during migration. This raises concern about ongoing expansion of offshore wind-energy development off the Atlantic Coast. Season, atmospheric conditions, and site-level characteristics such...

Context: Lethal control of predators is often undertaken to protect species of conservation concern. Traps are frequently baited to increase capture efficacy, but baited traps can potentially increase predation risk by attracting predators to protected areas. This is especially important if targeted predators can escape capture due to low trap success....

Observational data of coastal change over much of the Arctic are limited largely due to its immensity, remoteness, harsh environment, and restricted periods of sunlight and ice-free conditions. Barter Island, Alaska, is one of the few locations where an extensive, observational dataset exists, which enables a detailed assessment of the...

Anellovirus infections are highly prevalent in mammals, however, prior to this study only a handful of anellovirus genomes had been identified in members of the Felidae family. Here we characterise anelloviruses in pumas (Puma concolor), bobcats (Lynx rufus), Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis), caracals (Caracal caracal) and domestic cats (Felis catus)....

The gill is one of the most important organs for growth and survival of fishes. Early life stages in coral reef fishes often exhibit extreme physiological and demographic characteristics that are linked to well-established respiratory and ionoregulatory processes. However, gill development and function in coral...

Mineralogical and geochemical studies of interbedded black and gray mudstones in the Triassic part of the Triassic-Jurassic Otuk Formation (northern Alaska) document locally abundant barite and pyrite plus diverse redox signatures. These strata, deposited in an outer shelf setting at paleolatitudes of ~45 to 60°N, show widespread sedimentological evidence for...

Lahars are one of the greatest hazards at many volcanoes, including Volcán de Fuego (Guatemala). On 1 December 2018 at 8:00pm local Guatemala time (2:00:00 UTC), an hour-long lahar event was detected at Volcán de Fuego by two permanent seismo-acoustic stations along the Las Lajas channel on the southeast side....

Baseflow is critical to sustaining streamflow in the Upper Colorado River Basin. Therefore, effective water resources management requires estimates of baseflow response to climatic changes. This study provides the first estimates of projected baseflow changes from historical (1984 – 2012) to thirty-year periods centered around 2030, 2050,...

Translocations of North American prairie-grouse (genus Tympanuchus) present a conservation paradox wherein they are performed to augment, restore, or reintroduce populations, but translocated individuals exhibit a diminished ability to contribute to population restoration. For reintroduced populations without immigration, persistence can only be achieved through reproductive contributions by translocated individuals and their...

Forecasting ecosystem response to climate change is critical for guiding policymaking but challenging due to: complicated relationships between microclimates and regional climates; species’ responses that are driven by extremes rather than averages; the multifaceted nature of species’ interactions; and the lack of historical analogs to future climates. Given these challenges,...

Watershed studies are often onerous due to a lack of data available to portray baseline conditions with which to compare results of monitoring environmental effects. A paired-watershed approach is often adopted to simulate baseline conditions in an adjacent watershed that can be comparable but assumes there is...

Understanding the rates and patterns of tidal wetland elevation changes relative to sea-level is essential for understanding the extent of potential wetland loss over the coming years. Using an enhanced and more flexible modeling framework of an ecosystem model (WARMER-2), we explored sea-level rise (SLR) impacts...

Historically, Cisco Coregonus artedi and Lake Whitefish Coregonus clupeaformis were abundant throughout the Laurentian Great Lakes, but overharvest, habitat degradation, and interactions with exotic species caused most populations to collapse by the mid-1900s. Strict commercial fishery regulations and improved environmental and ecological conditions allowed Cisco to partially recover only...