Publications

Determining the success of invasive species eradication efforts is challenging because populations at very low abundance are difficult to detect. Environmental DNA (eDNA) sampling has recently emerged as a powerful tool for detecting rare aquatic animals; however, detectable fragments of DNA can persist over time despite absence of the targeted taxa and can therefore complicate eDNA...

How climate constrains species’ distributions through time and space is an important question in the context of conservation planning for climate change. Despite increasing awareness of the need to incorporate mechanism into species distribution models (SDMs), mechanistic modeling of endotherm distributions remains limited in this literature. Using the American pika (Ochotona princeps)...

The Yellowstone Cutthroat Trout Oncorhynchus clarkii bouvieri is native to the Rocky Mountains and has declined in abundance and distribution as a result of habitat degradation and introduced salmonid species. Many of its remaining strongholds are in headwater basins with minimal human disturbances. Understanding the life histories, vital rates, and behaviors of Yellowstone Cutthroat...

Advances in understanding the factors that limit a species’ range, particularly in the context of climate change, have come disproportionately through investigations at range edges or margins. The margins of a species’ range might often correspond with anomalous microclimates that confer habitat suitability where the species would otherwise fail to persist. We addressed this hypothesis...

Seasonal fluctuations in food availability can affect diets of consumers, which in turn may influence the physiological state of individuals and shape intra- and inter-specific patterns of resource use. High-elevation ecosystems often exhibit a pronounced seasonal “pulse” in productivity, although few studies document how resource use and energetic condition by avian consumers change in...

Accurately estimating cougar (Puma concolor) density is usually based on long-term research consisting of intensive capture and Global Positioning System collaring efforts and may cost hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. Because wildlife agency budgets rarely accommodate this approach, most infer cougar density from published literature, rely on short-term studies, or use hunter...

Solar power towers produce electrical energy from sunlight at an industrial scale. Little is known about the effects of this technology on flying animals and few methods exist for automatically detecting or observing wildlife at solar towers and other tall anthropogenic structures. Smoking objects are sometimes observed co-occurring with reflected, concentrated light (“solar flux”) in...

Freshwater wetlands are particularly vulnerable to climate change. Specifically, changes in temperature, precipitation, and evapotranspiration (i.e., climate drivers) are likely to alter flooding regimes of wetlands and affect the vital rates, abundance, and distributions of wetland-dependent species. Amphibians may be among the most climate-sensitive wetland-dependent groups, as many...

There is an urgent need to consider more aggressive and direct interventions for the conservation of freshwater fishes that are threatened by invasive species, habitat loss, and climate change. Conservation introduction (moving a species outside its indigenous range to other areas where conditions are predicted to be more suitable) is one type of translocation strategy that fisheries...

Occupancy modeling is important for exploring species distribution patterns and for conservation monitoring. Within this framework, explicit attention is given to species detection probabilities estimated from replicate surveys to sample units. A central assumption is that replicate surveys are independent Bernoulli trials, but this assumption becomes untenable when ecologists serially...

The summer of 2005 began with such promise for wolves in Yellowstone. The population had been at an all-time high the last few years, and the wolves appeared to be in good condition. Several packs had been particularly busy during the breeding season, and early summer pup counts suggested another healthy crop of new wolves rising through the ranks.

Electric barriers can inhibit passage and injure fish. Few data exist on electric barrier parameters that minimize these impacts and on how body size affects susceptibility, especially to nontarget fish species. The goal of this study was to determine electric barrier voltage and pulse-width settings that inhibit passage of larger bodied rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss (215–410 mm fork...