Evaluating mallard adaptive management models with time series
P.B. Conn, W. L. Kendall
2004, Journal of Wildlife Management (68) 1065-1081
Wildlife practitioners concerned with midcontinent mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) management in the United States have instituted a system of adaptive harvest management (AHM) as an objective format for setting harvest regulations. Under the AHM paradigm, predictions from a set of models that reflect key uncertainties about processes underlying population dynamics are...
Influence of weather extremes on the water levels of glaciated prairie wetlands
W.C. Johnson, S.E. Boettcher, K.A. Poiani, G. Guntenspergen
2004, Wetlands (24) 385-398
Orchid Meadows is a long-term wetland research and monitoring site on the Coteau des Prairie in extreme east-central South Dakota, USA. It is a 65-ha Waterfowl Production Area with numerous temporary, seasonal, and semi-permanent wetlands. Ground water and surface water have been monitored at the site from 1987...
On the estimation of dispersal and movement of birds
W. L. Kendall, J.D. Nichols
2004, Condor (106) 720-731
The estimation of dispersal and movement is important to evolutionary and population ecologists, as well as to wildlife managers. We review statistical methodology available to estimate movement probabilities. We begin with cases where individual birds can be marked and their movements estimated with the use of multisite capture-recapture...
Effects of rearing treatment on the behavior of captive whooping cranes (Grus americana)
M.D. Kreger, I. Estevez, Jeff S. Hatfield, G.F. Gee
2004, Applied Animal Behaviour Science (89) 243-261
Small founder populations of whooping cranes are managed to maximize egg production for the purpose of reintroducing young to the wild. This results in an excessive number of hatched chicks that cannot be naturally reared by parents. Hand-rearing techniques have been developed to raise the additional hatches. However,...
Detection of Ehrlichia chaffeensis in adult and nymphal stage lone star ticks (Amblyomma americanum) from Long Island, New York
T.R. Mixson, H. S. Ginsberg, S.R. Campbell, J.W. Sumner, C.D. Paddock
2004, Journal of Medical Entomology (41) 1104-1110
The lone star tick, Amblyomma americanum (L.), has increased in abundance in several regions of the northeastern United States, including areas of Long Island, NY. Adult and nymphal stage A. americanum collected from several sites on Long Island were evaluated for infection with Ehrlichia chaffeensis, the causative agent of human...
Movement behavior, dispersal, and the potential for localized management of deer in a suburban environment
W.F. Porter, H.B. Underwood, J.L. Woodard
2004, Journal of Wildlife Management (68) 247-256
We examined the potential for localized management of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) to be successful by measuring movements, testing site fidelity, and modeling the effects of dispersal. Fifty-nine females were radiomarked and tracked during 1997 through 2000 in Irondequoit, New York, USA, a suburb of Rochester. We constructed home ranges...
The relationship between species detection probability and local extinction probability
R. Alpizar-Jara, J.D. Nichols, J.E. Hines, J.R. Sauer, K. H. Pollock, C.S. Rosenberry
2004, Oecologia (141) 652-660
In community-level ecological studies, generally not all species present in sampled areas are detected. Many authors have proposed the use of estimation methods that allow detection probabilities that are < 1 and that are heterogeneous among species. These methods can also be used to estimate community-dynamic parameters such...
Estimating population trends with a linear model: Technical comments
John R. Sauer, William A. Link, J. Andrew Royle
2004, Condor (106) 435-440
Controversy has sometimes arisen over whether there is a need to accommodate the limitations of survey design in estimating population change from the count data collected in bird surveys. Analyses of surveys such as the North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) can be quite complex; it is natural to...
Contribution of natural history collection data to biodiversity assessment in national parks
A.F. O'Connell Jr., A.T. Gilbert, Jeff S. Hatfield
2004, Conservation Biology (18) 1254-1261
There has been mounting interest in the use of museum and herbaria collections to assess biodiversity; information is often difficult to locate and access, however, and few recommendations are available for effectively using natural history collections. As part of an effort to inventory vertebrates and vascular plants in U.S. national...
Dynamic use of wetlands by black ducks and mallards: Evidence against competitive exclusion
D.G. McAuley, D.A. Clugston, J. R. Longcore
2004, Wildlife Society Bulletin (32) 465-473
The decline of the American black duck (Anas rubripes) has been attributed to competition from mallards (A. platyrhynchos) that led to exclusive use of fertile wetlands by mallards. Data from annual breeding waterfowl surveys provide instantaneous, single observations of breeding pairs, which are used to estimate breeding population size and...
Estimation of tiger densities in the tropical dry forests of Panna, Central India, using photographic capture-recapture sampling
K.Ullas Karanth, Raghunandan S. Chundawat, James D. Nichols, N. Samba Kumar
2004, Animal Conservation (7) 285-290
Tropical dry-deciduous forests comprise more than 45% of the tiger (Panthera tigris) habitat in India. However, in the absence of rigorously derived estimates of ecological densities of tigers in dry forests, critical baseline data for managing tiger populations are lacking. In this study tiger densities were estimated using photographic capture–recapture...
Extinction rate estimates for plant populations in revisitation studies: Importance of detectability
M. Kery
2004, Conservation Biology (18) 570-574
Many researchers have obtained extinction-rate estimates for plant populations by comparing historical and current records of occurrence. A population that is no longer found is assumed to have gone extinct. Extinction can then be related to characteristics of these populations, such as habitat type, size, or species, to...
Native bees and plant pollination
H. S. Ginsberg
2004, Rhode Island Naturalist (11) 1-3
Bees are important pollinators, but evidence suggests that numbers of some species are declining. Decreases have been documented in the honey bee, Apis mellifera (which was introduced to North America), but there are no monitoring programs for the vast majority of native species, so we cannot be sure about...
Passive tick surveillance, dog seropositivity, and incidence of human Lyme disease
Jaree L. Johnson, Howard S. Ginsberg, Elyes Zhioua, Ulysses G. Whitworth, Daniel Markowski, Kerwin E. Hyland, Renjie Hu
2004, Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases (4) 137-142
Data on nymphal Ixodes scapularis ticks submitted by the public to the University of Rhode Island Tick Research Laboratory for testing from 1991 to 2000 were compared with human case data from the Rhode Island Department of Health to determine the efficacy of passive tick surveillance at assessing...
Tigers and their prey: Predicting carnivore densities from prey abundance
K. U. Karanth, J.D. Nichols, S. Kumar, W.A. Link, J.E. Hines
2004, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (101) 4854-4858
The goal of ecology is to understand interactions that determine the distribution and abundance of organisms. In principle, ecologists should be able to identify a small number of limiting resources for a species of interest, estimate densities of these resources at different locations across the landscape, and then use these...
Investigating species co-occurrence patterns when species are detected imperfectly
D.I. MacKenzie, L.L. Bailey, J.D. Nichols
2004, Journal of Animal Ecology (73) 546-555
1. Over the last 30 years there has been a great deal of interest in investigating patterns of species co-occurrence across a number of locations, which has led to the development of numerous methods to determine whether there is evidence that a particular pattern may not have occurred by random...
Monitoring programs need to take into account imperfect species detectability
M. Kery, Hans Schmid
2004, Basic and Applied Ecology (5) 65-73
Biodiversiry monitoring is important to identify biological units in need of conservation and to check the effectiveness of conservation actions. Programs generally monitor species richness and its changes (trend). Usually, no correction is made for imperfect species detectability. Instead, it is assumed that each species present has...
Comparative dynamics of small mammal populations in treefall gaps and surrounding understorey within Amazonian rainforest
H. Beck, M.S. Gaines, J.E. Hines, J.D. Nichols
2004, Oikos (106) 27-38
Variation in food resource availability can have profound effects on habitat selection and dynamics of populations. Previous studies reported higher food resource availability and fruit removal in treefall gaps than in the understorey. Therefore, gaps have been considered 'keystone habitat' for Neotropical frugivore birds. Here we test if this prediction...
Mortality of Mississippi Sandhill Crane chicks
Glenn H. Olsen
2004, Journal of Avian Medicine and Surgery (18) 269-272
Mississippi sandhill cranes (Grus canadensis pulla) are a highly endangered species that live in the wild in 1 county in Mississippi. As part of a large effort to restore these endangered cranes, we are conducting a project to look at the causes of mortality in crane chicks on the...
Modeling abundance effects in distance sampling
J. Andrew Royle, D.K. Dawson, S. Bates
2004, Ecology (85) 1591-1597
Distance-sampling methods are commonly used in studies of animal populations to estimate population density. A common objective of such studies is to evaluate the relationship between abundance or density and covariates that describe animal habitat or other environmental influences. However, little attention has been focused on methods of modeling abundance...
Testing life history predictions in a long-lived seabird: A population matrix approach with improved parameter estimation
P.F. Doherty Jr., E.A. Schreiber, J.D. Nichols, J.E. Hines, W.A. Link, G.A. Schenk, R.W. Schreiber
2004, Oikos (105) 606-618
Life history theory and associated empirical generalizations predict that population growth rate (λ) in long-lived animals should be most sensitive to adult survival; the rates to which λ is most sensitive should be those with the smallest temporal variances; and stochastic environmental events should most affect the rates to which...
Estimation of sex-specific survival from capture-recapture data when sex is not always known
J.D. Nichols, W. L. Kendall, J.E. Hines, J. A. Spendelow
2004, Ecology (85) 3192-3201
Many animals lack obvious sexual dimorphism, making assignment of sex difficult even for observed or captured animals. For many such species it is possible to assign sex with certainty only at some occasions; for example, when they exhibit certain types of behavior. A common approach to handling this situation in...
Hierarchial mark-recapture models: a framework for inference about demographic processes
W.A. Link, R. J. Barker
2004, Animal Biodiversity and Conservation (27) 441-449
The development of sophisticated mark-recapture models over the last four decades has provided fundamental tools for the study of wildlife populations, allowing reliable inference about population sizes and demographic rates based on clearly formulated models for the sampling processes. Mark-recapture models are now routinely described by large numbers of parameters....
Abundance estimation and conservation biology
J.D. Nichols, D.I. MacKenzie
2004, Animal Biodiversity and Conservation (27) 437-439
Abundance is the state variable of interest in most population–level ecological research and in most programs involving management and conservation of animal populations. Abundance is the single parameter of interest in capture–recapture models for closed populations (e.g., Darroch, 1958; Otis et al., 1978; Chao, 2001). The initial capture–recapture models developed...
Computing and software
Gary C. White, J.E. Hines
2004, Animal Biodiversity and Conservation (27) 175-176
The reality is that the statistical methods used for analysis of data depend upon the availability of software. Analysis of marked animal data is no different than the rest of the statistical field. The methods used for analysis are those that are available in reliable software packages. Thus, the critical...
