Publications

Exurban development is consuming wildlife habitat within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem with potential consequences to the long-term conservation of grizzly bears Ursus arctos. We assessed the impacts of alternative future land-use scenarios by linking an existing regression-based simulation model predicting rural development with a spatially explicit model that predicted bear...

Wildlife reintroductions select or treat individuals for good health with the expectation that these individuals will fare better than infected animals. However, these individuals, new to their environment, may also be particularly susceptible to circulating infections and this may result in high morbidity and mortality, potentially jeopardizing the goals of recovery. Here, using the

No abstract available.

Habitat modifications and supplemental feeding artificially aggregate some wildlife populations, with potential impacts upon contact and parasite transmission rates. Less well recognized, however, is how increased aggregation may affect wildlife physiology. Crowding has been shown to induce stress responses, and increased glucocorticoid (GC) concentrations can reduce immune function and...

An important consideration for long term monitoring programs is determining the required sampling effort to detect trends in specific ecological indicators of interest. To enhance the Greater Yellowstone Inventory and Monitoring Network’s water resources protocol(s) (O’Ney 2006 and O’Ney et al. 2009 [under review]), we developed a set of tools to: (1) determine the statistical power for...

Because the distribution of alpine tundra is associated with spatially limited cold climates, global warming may threaten its local extent or existence. This notion has been challenged, however, based on observations of the diversity of alpine tundra in small areas primarily due to topographic variation. The importance of diversity in temperature or moisture conditions caused by...

Human-driven changes in the global environment pose an increasingly urgent challenge for the management of ecosystems that is made all the more difficult by the uncertain future of both environmental conditions and ecological responses. Land managers need strategies to increase regional adaptive capacity, but relevant and rapid assessment approaches are lacking. To address this need, we...

Monitoring of natural resources is crucial to ecosystem conservation, and yet it can pose many challenges. Annual surveys for amphibian breeding occupancy were conducted in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks over a 4-year period (2006–2009) at two scales: catchments (portions of watersheds) and individual wetland sites. Catchments were selected in a stratified random sample with...

1. Stream salamanders and fish often co-occur even though fish prey on and outcompete salamanders. However, the mechanisms that allow palatable salamanders to coexist with fish are unknown. 2. We tested mechanisms in the field that promote coexistence between Idaho giant salamanders (Dicamptodon aterrimus) and stream salmonid fishes in headwater streams. Previous research in this system...

High seroprevalance for Brucella abortus among elk on Wyoming feedgrounds suggests that supplemental feeding may influence parasite transmission and disease dynamics by altering the rate at which elk contact infectious materials in their environment. We used proximity loggers and video cameras to estimate rates of elk-to-fetus contact (the primary source of brucellosis transmission)...

Twenty-five populations of westslope cutthroat trout from throughout their native range were genotyped at 20 microsatellite loci to describe the genetic structure of westslope cutthroat trout. The most genetic diversity (heterozygosity, allelic richness, and private alleles) existed in populations from the Snake River drainage, while populations from the Missouri River drainage had the...

To protect and restore wintering waterfowl habitat, managers require knowledge of routine wintering waterfowl movements and habitat use. During preliminary screening of Doppler weather radar data we observed biological movements consistent with routine foraging flights of wintering waterfowl known to occur near Lacassine National Wildlife Refuge (NWR), Louisiana. During the winters of...