Publications

We describe a new species of bat in the genus Myotis (Vespertilionidae: Myotinae) from the district of Sipaliwini, Suriname. The new species (Myotis clydejonesi sp. nov.), known from a single specimen, is sister to a clade of M. nigricans (Schinz) from southern South America, but differs from all Neotropical species of Myotis in qualitative and quantitative morphological characters and...

The cryptic behavior and ecology of herpetofauna make estimating the impacts of environmental change on demography difficult; yet, the ability to measure demographic relationships is essential for elucidating mechanisms leading to the population declines reported for herpetofauna worldwide. Recently developed spatial capture–recapture (SCR) methods are well suited to standard...

The response of ecosystems to climate warming is likely to include threshold events when small changes in key environmental drivers produce large changes in an ecosystem. Wetlands of the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) are especially sensitive to climate variability, yet the possibility that functional changes may occur more rapidly with warming than expected has not been examined or...

Auditory sensitivity was measured in a species of diving duck that is not often kept in captivity, the lesser scaup. Behavioral (psychoacoustics) and electrophysiological [the auditory brainstem response (ABR)] methods were used to measure in-air auditory sensitivity, and the resulting audiograms were compared. Both approaches yielded audiograms with similar U-shapes and regions of...

West Nile virus is a deadly virus for young cranes. In testing two different vaccines on both adult sandhill cranes (Grus canadensis), we discovered that some blood parameters are altered by exposure to the virus. White blood cell counts were the most obvious, and may be used as an indicator of West Nile virus exposure in cranes. Other hematology and serum chemistry results were studied...

Increasing daylight is known to be a breeding stimulus in many avian species breeding in northern latitudes. This is thought to be true for cranes that breed in such latitudes including the Whooping Crane (Grus americana). For this reason, the captive breeding centers use artificial light to lengthen daylight hours, but no study has been done to look at the effect of such lighting on the

Multiple pathways exist for species to respond to changing climates. However, responses of dispersal-limited species will be more strongly tied to ability to adapt within existing populations as rates of environmental change will likely exceed movement rates. Here, we assess adaptive capacity in Plethodon cinereus, a dispersal-limited woodland salamander. We quantify plasticity in...

This report, based on a symposium held on October 13, 2011, at the National Wildlife Visitor Center at the Patuxent Research Refuge in Laurel, MD, documents the history of the Patuxent Research Refuge and the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, collectively known as Patuxent. The symposium was one of the many activities occurring at that time to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the...

Hammock camping is dramatically expanding along the Appalachian Trail and raising both questions and concerns among Trail land managers, club members, and backpackers. This article examines some of the advantages and disadvantages of hammock camping, including resource and social impacts. Some Leave No Trace hammock camping practices are included for those using hammocks at well...

During the past 30 years, thousands of hectares of oak-dominated bottomland hardwood plantations have been planted on agricultural fields in the Mississippi Alluvial Valley. Many of these plantations now have closed canopies and sparse understories. Silvicultural treatments could create a more heterogeneous forest structure, with canopy gaps and increased understory vegetation for...

Drastic shifts in species distributions are a cause of concern for ecologists. Such shifts pose great threat to biodiversity especially under unprecedented anthropogenic and natural disturbances. Many studies have documented recent shifts in species distributions. However, most of these studies are limited to regional scales, and do not consider the abundance structure within species...

This chapter provides a non-technical overview of ‘closed population capture–recapture’ models, a class of well-established models that are widely applied in ecology, such as removal sampling, covariate models, and distance sampling. These methods are regularly adopted for studies of reptiles, in order to estimate abundance from counts of marked individuals while accounting for imperfect...