Publications

Background

Characterizing the genetic structure and connectivity between populations of endangered species can be used to inform management actions. In vagile species with high gene flow or recently established populations, such characterizations can be difficult to undertake using traditional genetic markers, and genetic stock identification (GSI) may be confounded by allele-sharing between...

Gopher Tortoises inhabit coastal systems, including barrier islands, across the southeastern U.S. St. Vincent National Wildlife Refuge is an uninhabited barrier island located off the coast of northwestern Florida. Although tortoises have been observed on the island, no information is available on the status of the population. We conducted a line transect distance sampling survey to...

From butterflies to lizards and from sharks to seabirds, wildlife exhibit tactics to survive the impacts of tropical cyclones, also known as hurricanes, cyclones, or typhoons depending on where they occur. Some species seek refuge during the storm by moving, some remain in place and ride it out, and others move longer distances, avoiding the main impacts of the storm altogether. Tropical...

J.N. “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge (DDNWR) is located on Sanibel Island along the southwestern coast of Florida, USA. There, eutrophication attributed to agricultural discharge along the Caloosahatchee River has affected the area’s aquatic habitat. In anticipation of additional nutrient loading, we experimentally fertilized mangrove forests with nitrogen (+N; NH4) and...

Fungal pathogens can cause epizootics that result in widespread mortality and rapid population declines in some species. However, even in the absence of high disease-induced mortality, enzootic mycoses could have large-scale impacts on host population dynamics. Here, we examined the effects of ophidiomycosis, an enzootic fungal disease, on a Louisiana snake community over a 3-year period...

Mangroves are crucial for biodiversity conservation, coastal protection, and supporting local livelihoods. Mangroves may also protect coasts from storms and rising sea levels and can play a major role in climate mitigation. Threats to their health include activities such as infrastructural development, urban encroachment, aquaculture and crop farming, and oil and gas exploration. We...

Pomacea maculata is an invasive aquatic apple snail species that poses serious ecological, agricultural, and public health threats across the southeastern United States. Its spread, particularly in Louisiana, has heavily impacted rice and crayfish farming, an industry producing over 90% of U.S. crayfish and valued at more than $250 million annually. The snail damages seedling rice, clogs...

Retrieving the phytoplankton absorption coefficient (aphy; m−1), one of the most spectrally rich inherent optical properties, remains challenging in optically complex coastal waters worldwide. Leveraging NASA's new hyperspectral mission, PACE, we introduce Hyper-MoE-VAE, a deep-learning architecture that integrates a Mixture-of-Experts with a Variational Autoencoder to retrieve high...

Hurricanes drive diverse estuarine phytoplankton responses and can trigger cascading ecological and physicochemical impacts. Capturing these short-term dynamics requires high spatiotemporal resolution. Here, we applied a globally-applicable coastal ocean color algorithm, Variational Autoencoder (VAE), to Sentinel-2 MSI imagery for chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) estimation and validated its strong

As environmental conditions change, land managers are increasingly concerned about the potential for new aquatic invasive species to move into their jurisdictions. Because managers may have limited resources, detecting invasive species early is important as prevention is more effective and less costly than ongoing mitigation of established populations. Tools built to assist early...

No abstract available.