Publications

Background

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 global distribution, little is known about their...

Genetic and genomic data are collected for a vast array of scientific and applied purposes. Despite mandates for public archiving, data are typically used only by the generating authors. The reuse of genetic and genomic datasets remains uncommon because it is difficult, if not impossible, due to non-standard archiving practices and lack of contextual metadata. But as the new field of...

Testing for intraspecific variation for host tolerance or resistance in wild populations is important for informing conservation decisions about captive breeding, translocation, and disease treatment. Here, we test the importance of tolerance and resistance in multiple populations of boreal toads (Anaxyrus boreas boreas) against Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), the amphibian fungal...

Public lands are often managed for multiple uses ranging from energy development to rare plant conservation. Habitat models can help land managers assess and mitigate potential effects of projects on rare plants, but it is unclear how models are currently being used. Our goal was to better understand how staff in the Bureau of Land Management currently use habitat models to inform their...

Homeowner wildfire risk mitigation and preparedness are important components of community wildfire readiness. This report presents data collected via rapid wildfire risk assessments to describe the parcel-level wildfire risk of properties within the Stemilt basin, Chelan County, Washington study area. The report also describes household survey data collected from homeowners in the study...

No abstract available.

The City of Santa Fe is well known for arts, food, and architecture, but it also faces significant risk of wildfire. In 2020, the City of Santa Fe partnered with the Wildfire Research (WiRē) team with the goal of better understanding the needs of residents within the study area and their level of support for wildfire risk mitigation programs. The resulting project centers on two types of...

No abstract available.

It is important to understand the factors affecting the reproductive success of an invasive species to estimate population size and develop management plans. There remains much we do not understand about the reproductive biology of invasive Burmese Pythons in both their native and invasive range. Oviposition site selection is an important factor in determining reproductive success as...

Streptomyces are prolific producers of secondary metabolites from which many clinically useful compounds have been derived. They inhabit diverse habitats but have rarely been reported in vertebrates. Here, we aim to determine to what extent the ecological source (bat host species and cave sites) influence the genomic and biosynthetic diversity of Streptomyces bacteria. We analysed draft...

Drought-induced groundwater decline and warming associated with climate change are primary threats to dryland riparian woodlands. We used the extreme 2012–2019 drought in southern California as a natural experiment to assess how differences in water-use strategies and groundwater dependence may influence the drought susceptibility of dryland riparian tree species with overlapping...