Publications

Until relatively recently the importance of fire and the origin of fire-adaptive traits have received minimal attention from paleoecologists, and appreciation of this importance has varied across the different mediterranean-type climate (MTC) ecosystems. For example, Axelrod (1973) and Raven & Axelrod (1978) wrote extensive treatises on the origins of the California flora, and yet gave...

Competition is a well-documented contributor to tree mortality in temperate forests, with numerous studies documenting a relationship between tree death and the competitive environment. Models frequently rely on competition as the only non-random mechanism affecting tree mortality. However, for mature forests, competition may cease to be the primary driver of mortality. We use a large...

South Africa's mediterranean-type climate (MTC) region is the smallest of the five MTC regions, centered in the southwestern corner of the Western Cape Province (Fig. 7.1). This Cape region is dominated by fynbos shrublands (see Fig. 1.6e) but this fynbos biome continues eastward far outside the MTC. The Cape region is unusual in that shrublands dominate under climate regimes that also...

The highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 outbreak at Qinghai Lake, China, in 2005 caused the death of over 6,000 migratory birds, half of which were Bar-headed Geese Anser indicus. Understanding the movements of this species may inform monitoring of outbreak risks for HPAI viruses; thus, we investigated the movement patterns of 29 Bar-headed Geese at Qinghai Lake, China during...

At global and regional scales, tree mortality rates are positively correlated with forest net primary productivity (NPP). Yet causes of the correlation are unknown, in spite of potentially profound implications for our understanding of environmental controls of forest structure and dynamics and, more generally, our understanding of broad-scale environmental controls of population...

Sea otters Enhydra lutris can be bycaught and drowned in fishing pots and traps, which may pose a threat to the welfare of otter populations. We explored this potential problem and its solutions using a wide variety of analyses. We exposed live California (USA) sea otters to finfish traps, lobster traps, and mock Dungeness crab traps in captive trials and found that the animals attempted...

Habitat conditions and nutrient reserve levels during spring migration have been suggested as important factors affecting population declines in waterfowl, emphasizing the need to identify key sites used during spring and understand habitat features and resource availability at stopover sites. We used satellite telemetry to identify stopover sites used by surf scoters migrating through...

Comparative phylogeographic studies have had mixed success in identifying common phylogeographic patterns among co-distributed organisms. Whereas some have found broadly similar patterns across a diverse array of taxa, others have found that the histories of different species are more idiosyncratic than congruent. The variation in the results of comparative phylogeographic studies could...

Background: High values of specific leaf area (SLA) are generally associated with high maximal growth rates in resource-rich conditions, such as mesic climates and fertile soils. However, fire may complicate this relationship since its frequency varies with both climate and soil fertility, and fire frequency selects for regeneration strategies (resprouting versus seeding) that are not...

The mediterranean-type climate (MTC) in Australia spans from the southwestern part of Western Australia to include much of South Australia and western Victoria (Fig. 8.1), which covers a longitudinal distance second only to the Mediterranean Basin MTC region. As in other MTC regions, the highly fire-prone evergreen sclerophyllous shrub and tree mediterranean-type vegetation (MTV) extends...

A large diversity of alien plants is found in most mediterranean-type climate (MTC) regions and fire is sometimes closely linked to their ability to invade natural ecosystems. This is a concern because aliens often upset natural ecosystem processes, and thus are a major management concern. These five regions not only differ in their contributions of non-native plant species to other...

We surveyed burned and unburned plots across four habitat reserves in San Diego County, California, USA, in 2005 and 2006, to assess the effects of the 2003 wildfires on the community structure and relative abundance of rodent species. The reserves each contained multiple vegetation types (coastal sage scrub, chaparral, woodland, and grassland) and spanned from 250 m to 1078 m in...