Publications

Global concerns for desertification have focused on the slow recovery of extensive and expanding drylands following disturbance, which may be exacerbated by climate change. Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) are photosynthetic soil communities found in drylands worldwide, which are central to the stability and resilience of dryland ecosystems, but vulnerable to global change. Here we use...

Aim Connectivity is vital to the resiliency of populations to environmental change and stochastic events, especially for cold-adapted species as Arctic and alpine tundra habitats retract as the climate warms. We examined the influence of past and current landscapes on genomic connectivity in cold-adapted galliformes as a critical first step to assess the vulnerability of Alaska ptarmigan...

Beginning in February of 2020, researchers and staff of the United States Geological Survey (USGS), Bat Conservation International (BCI), Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and Montana State University associated with the North American Bat Monitoring Program (NABat) collaborated with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to provide technical assistance in...

Rapid recession of glaciers and snowfields is threatening the habitats of cold-water biodiversity worldwide. In many ice-sourced headwaters of western North America, stoneflies in the genus Lednia (Plecoptera: Nemouridae) are a prominent member of the invertebrate community. With a broad distribution in mountain streams and close ties to declining glacier cover, Lednia has emerged as a...

Predators may create healthier prey populations by selectively removing diseased individuals. Predators typically prefer some ages of prey over others, which may, or may not, align with those prey ages that are most likely to be diseased.The interaction of age-specific infection and predation has not been previously explored and likely has sizable effects on disease dynamics. We...

RestoreNet is an ecological restoration experiment that is networked across multiple sites, spanning dryland ecosystems in the southwestern United States. The experiment is organized and led by the U.S. Geological Survey’s Restoration Assessment and Monitoring Program for the Southwest (RAMPS). This protocol functions to provide guidance to additional partners on how to set up a...

No abstract available.

Secondary sexual traits (e.g., horns and antlers) have ecological and evolutionary importance and are of management interest for game species. Yet, how these traits respond to emerging threats like infectious disease remains underexplored. Infectious pneumonia threatens bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) populations across North America and we hypothesized it may also reduce horn growth in...

Widespread amphibian declines were well documented at the end of the 20th century, raising concerns about the need to identify individual and interactive contributors to this global trend. At the same time, there was growing interest in the use of amphibians as ecological indicators. In the United States, wetland and amphibian monitoring programs were launched in some national parks as a...

Harpacticoid copepods can be a substantial component of the meiobenthic community in lakes and serve an ecological role as detritivores. Here we present the first species-level lake-wide quantitative assessment of the harpacticoid assemblage of Lake Ontario with emphasis on the status of nonindigenous species. Additionally, we provide COI-5P sequences of harpacticoid taxa through Barcode...

Globally, sea turtle research and conservation efforts are underway to identify important high-use areas where these imperiled individuals may be resident for weeks to months to years. In the southeastern Gulf of Mexico, recent telemetry studies highlighted post-nesting foraging sites for federally endangered green turtles (Chelonia mydas) around the Florida Keys. In order to delineate...

The Jerusalem cricket subfamily Stenopelmatinae is distributed from south-western Canada through the western half of the United States to as far south as Ecuador. Recently, the generic classification of this subfamily was updated to contain two genera, the western North American Ammopelmatus, and the Mexican, and central and northern South American Stenopelmatus. The taxonomy of the...