Publications

In highly fragmented and relatively stable cold-seep ecosystems, species are expected to exhibit high migration rates and long-distance dispersal of long-lived pelagic larvae to maintain genetic integrity over their range. Accordingly, several species inhabiting cold seeps are widely distributed across the whole Atlantic Ocean, with low genetic divergence between metapopulations on both...

Context

Surveillance programmes are essential for detecting emerging pathogens and often rely on molecular methods to make inference about the presence of a target disease agent. However, molecular methods rarely detect target DNA perfectly. For example, molecular pathogen detection methods can result in misclassification (i.e. false positives and false negatives) or partial detection errors (i...

Water nutrient management efforts are frequently coordinated across thousands of water bodies, leading to a need for spatially extensive information to facilitate decision making. Here we explore potential applications of a machine learning model of river low-flow total phosphorus (TP) concentrations to support landscape nutrient management. The model was trained, validated, and then...

Background

Loss of habitat and human disturbance are major factors in the worldwide decline of shorebird populations, including that of the threatened migratory piping plover (Charadrius melodus). From 2013 to 2018, we conducted land-based surveys of the shorebird community every other week during the peak piping plover season (September to March). We assessed the ability of a thin plate spline...

Nitrate concentrations have been rising in surface waters over the last century and now frequently exceed drinking water standards and environmental safety benchmarks globally. Health-wise, these trends are concerning because nitrate has been shown to disrupt endocrine function and developmental outcomes. The present study investigated potential sublethal effects of nitrate on developing...

Unusual wildlife mortality events provide a unique opportunity to collect information on demographics, disease, and body condition in affected wildlife, which may be useful for informing oil spill damage assessments and future spill responses. In November 2007, the Cosco Busan Oil Spill occurred in San Francisco Bay, California, a globally important wintering area for waterfowl. The...

The value of information is a central concept in decision analysis, used to quantify how much the expected outcome of a decision would be improved if epistemic uncertainty could be resolved prior to committing to a course of action. One of the challenges, however, in quantitative analysis of the value of information is that the calculations are demanding, especially in requiring...

Kings Bay in northwest Florida, USA, is an important winter home of the largest aggregation of Florida manatee (Trichechus manatus latirostris), and the only location in the United States where visitors legally swim and interact with manatees. In addition to ambient conditions, visitors to the area and management actions have the potential to influence manatee behaviors. We tracked 32...

In arid and semiarid systems, positive effects of nurse shrubs generally occur immediately underneath and around shrub canopies, creating microsites that can be targeted to promote plant establishment in restoration settings. Alternatively, the best microsites may occur in the interspace zone immediately surrounding nurse shrubs if positive abiotic effects extend beyond nurse shrub...

A wild Agassiz's desert tortoise, Gopherus agassizii, with bilateral eyelid reduction and plaques of tissue covering the superior surface of both corneas was examined in the field and subsequently submitted to the University of Florida for diagnostics. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR), from a swab of both corneas, was positive for Mycoplasma agassizii. Two months later, the tortoise was