Southwest Biological Science Center
Publications
The historical context of contemporary climatic adaptation: A case study in the climatically dynamic and environmentally complex southwestern United States
The process of adaptation can be highly dependent upon historical and contemporary factors, especially in environmentally and topographically complex regions affected by Pleistocene glaciations. Here, we investigate Hilaria jamesii (Poaceae), a dryland C4 graminoid, to test how patterns of adaptive genetic variation are linked to...
Massatti, Robert; Knowles, L. Lacey Mercury and selenium concentrations in fishes of the Upper Colorado River Basin, southwestern United States: A retrospective assessment
Mercury (Hg) and selenium (Se) are contaminants of concern for fish in the Upper Colorado River Basin (UCRB). We explored Hg and Se in fish tissues (2,324 individuals) collected over 50 years (1962–2011) from the UCRB. Samples include native and non-native fish collected from lotic waterbodies spanning 7 major tributaries to the Colorado River....
Day, Natalie; Schmidt, Travis; Roberts, James J.; Osmundson, Barbara C.; Willacker, James; Eagles-Smith, Collin Bug flows: Don’t count your midges until they hatch
Usually when people hear about a “bug problem” it’s due to an undesirable overabundance of insects (think plague of locusts). In the Colorado River in Grand Canyon, however, we are faced with the opposite predicament: the river is essentially devoid of bugs. Aquatic insects are a fundamental component of a healthy river ecosystem. Most aquatic...
Metcalfe, Anya; Muehlbauer, Jeffrey; Ford, Morgan; Kennedy, Theodore Ecological effects of establishing a 40-year oasis protection system in a Northwestern China Desert
Aims: Desertification around oasis areas is a serious problem in semi-arid and arid regions, which is expected to continue into the future due to a rapidly increasing human population. Oasis protection systems are created to reverse desertification by recovering degraded soil and vegetation properties and improving ecosystem services. Most...
Wang, Guohua; Munson, Seth M.; Yu, Kailiang; Chen, Ning; Gou, Qianqian Turtle biogeography: Global regionalization and conservation priorities
Global declines in reptile biodiversity have garnered the attention of the conservation community. However, regional knowledge gaps and data deficiency impede the protection and preservation of many species currently facing the threat of extinction. Thus, it is imperative to conduct systematic assessments and create innovative conservation tools...
Ennen, Joshua R.; Agha, Mickey; Sweat, Sarah C.; Matamoros, Wilfredo A.; Lovich, Jeffrey E.; Rhodin, Anders G.J.; Iverson, John B.; Hoagstrom, Christopher W. Book review of rattlesnakes of the Grand Canyon, by Schuett, G.W., Smith, C.F., and Ashley, B.
No abstract available.
Nowak, Erika M.; Drost, Charles A. Assessing plant production responses to climate across water-limited regions using Google Earth Engine
(Munson) Climate variability and change acting at broad scales can lead to divergent changes in plant production at local scales. Quantifying how production responds to variation in climate at local scales is essential to understand underlying ecological processes and inform land management decision-making, but has historically been limited in...
Bunting, Erin L.; Munson, Seth M.; Bradford, John Evolutionary history predicts high-impact invasions by herbivorous insects
A long‐standing goal of invasion biology is to identify factors driving highly variable impacts of non‐native species. Although hypotheses exist that emphasize the role of evolutionary history (e.g., enemy release hypothesis & defense‐free space hypothesis), predicting the impact of non‐native herbivorous insects has eluded scientists for over...
Mech, Angela M.; Thomas, Kathryn A.; Marsico, Travis D.; Herms, Daniel A.; Allen, Craig; Ayres, Matthew P.; Gandhi, Kamal J.K.; Gurevitch, Jessica; Havill, Nathan P.; Hufbauer, Ruth A.; Liebhold, Andrew M.; Raffa, Kenneth F.; Schulz, Ashley N.; Uden, Daniel R.; Tobin, Patrick C.
Managing sand along the Colorado River to protect cultural sites downstream of Glen Canyon Dam
The construction of Glen Canyon Dam in northern Arizona has greatly reduced the supply of sand to the Colorado River corridor through Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and Grand Canyon National Park, hereafter referred to as Glen Canyon and Grand Canyon, respectively. This deficit has strongly affected the natural sediment cycle in this iconic...
Cook, Terri; East, Amy; Fairley, Helen; Sankey, Joel B. Understanding reproductive allometry in turtles: A slippery “slope”
Measures of reproductive output in turtles are generally positively correlated with female body size. However, a full understanding of reproductive allometry in turtles requires logarithmic transformation of reproductive and body size variables prior to regression analyses. This allows for slope comparisons with expected linear or cubic...
Iverson, John B.; Lindeman, Peter V.; Lovich, Jeffrey E. Climate-driven shifts in soil temperature and moisture regimes suggest opportunities to enhance assessments of dryland resilience and resistance
Assessing landscape patterns in climate vulnerability, as well as resilience and resistance to drought, disturbance, and invasive species, requires appropriate metrics of relevant environmental conditions. In dryland systems of western North America, soil temperature and moisture regimes have been widely utilized as an indicator of resilience to...
Bradford, John; Schlaepfer, Daniel R.; Lauenroth, William K.; Palmquist, Kyle A.; Chambers, Jeanne C.; Maestas, Jeremy D.; Campbell, Steven B. A framework for quantifying resilience to forest disturbance
(Bradford) The concept of ecological resilience is an invaluable tool to assess the risk of state transitions and predict the impact of management on an ecosystem’s response to future disturbances. However, resilience is difficult to quantify and the factors contributing to resilience are often unknown in systems subject to multiple disturbances....
Bryant, Timothy; Waring, Kristen; Sánchez, Meador; Bradford, John B.