Publications

Marine protected area (MPA) designs, including large-scale MPAs (LSMPAs; >150,000 km2), mobile MPAs (fluid spatiotemporal boundaries), and MPA networks, may offer different benefits to species and could enhance protection by encompassing spatiotemporal scales of animal movement. We sought to understand how well LSMPAs could benefit nine highly-mobile marine species in the tropics now and...

Protected areas like national parks are essential elements of conservation because they limit human influence on the landscape, which protects biodiversity and ecosystem function. The role of national parks in conservation, however, often goes far beyond limiting human influence. The U.S. National Park Service and its system of land units contribute substantively to conservation by...

Renewable energy production can kill individual birds, but little is known about how it affects avian populations. We assessed the vulnerability of populations for 23 priority bird species killed at wind and solar facilities in California, USA. Bayesian hierarchical models suggested that 48% of these species were vulnerable to population-level effects from added fatalities caused by...

Ecosystems are dynamic systems with complex responses to environmental variation. In response to pervasive stressors of changing climate and disturbance regimes, many ecosystems are realigning rapidly across spatial scales, in many cases moving outside of their observed historical range of variation into alternative ecological states. In some cases, these new states are transitory and...

Mediterranean regions are biodiversity hotspots whose landscapes are characterized by evergreen sclerophyllous vegetation, mild-wet winters, and hot-dry summers. In the Northern Hemisphere, they occur in the Mediterranean Basin and California regions. In these areas, whose habitats are heavily shaped by centuries of anthropic activities, the main effects of climate change include a...

The estuarine habitat mosaic supports the reproduction, growth, and survival of resident and migratory fish species by providing a diverse portfolio of unique habitats with varying physical and biological features. Global climate change is expected to result in increasing temperatures, rising sea levels, and changes in riverine hydrology, which will have profound effects on the extent...

Disturbances are a key component of ecological processes in coastal ecosystems. Investigating factors that affect tidal marsh accretion and elevation change is important, largely due to accelerating sea-level rise and the ecological and economic value of wetlands. Sediment accumulation rates, elevation change, and flooding were examined at five marshes along a riverine-tidal gradient in...

Why do so many parasitic worms have complex life-cycles? A complex life-cycle has at least two hypothesized costs: (i) worms with longer life-cycles, i.e. more successive hosts, must be generalists at the species level, which might reduce lifetime survival or growth, and (ii) each required host transition adds to the risk that a worm will fail to complete its life-cycle. Comparing...

Migratory waterbirds (i.e., shorebirds, wading birds, and waterfowl) rely on a diffuse continental network of wetland habitats to support annual life cycle needs. Emerging threats of climate and land-use change raise new concerns over the sustainability of these habitat networks as water scarcity triggers cascading ecological effects impacting wetland habitat availability. Here we use...

Species distributions are governed by processes occurring at multiple spatial scales. For species with complex life cycles, the needs of all life stages must be met within the dispersal limitations of the species. Multi-scale processes can be particularly important for these species, where small-scale patterns in specific habitat components can affect the distribution of one life stage...

The endangered mountain yellow-legged frog (Rana muscosa) has been reduced to

Mangrove surface elevation is the crux of mangrove vulnerability to sea level rise. Local topography influences critical periods of tidal inundation that govern distributions of mangrove species and dictates future distributions. This study surveyed ground surface elevations of the extensive mangroves of Pohnpei, Federated States of Micronesia, integrating four survey technologies to...