Publications

Declines of many bumble bee species have raised concerns because of their importance as pollinators and potential harbingers of declines among other insect taxa. At present, bumble bee conservation is predominantly focused on midsummer flower restoration in open habitats. However, a growing body of evidence suggests that forests may play an important role in bumble bee life history...

Evaluations of resource use among native piscivores in natural lakes have consistently documented significant partitioning that supports coexistence. Partitioning may be less prominent in reservoirs where water-level fluctuations can compress habitat and trophic diversity, but studies are lacking. Stable isotopes and bioenergetic models were used to quantify trophic interactions within a...

Executive Summary Managers of our Nation’s resources face unprecedented challenges driven by the convergence of increasing, competing societal demands and a changing climate that affects the stability, vulnerability, and predictability of those resources. To help meet these challenges, the scientific community must take advantage of all available technologies, data, and integrative Earth...

Extensive urbanization in coastal southern California has reduced natural habitat in this biodiversity hotspot. To better conserve ecological communities, state and federal agencies, along with local jurisdictions and private stakeholders, developed regional conservation plans for southern California. Although many protected areas exist within this region, the patchwork nature of these...

The widespread application of directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies expanded oil and gas (OG) development to previously inaccessible resources. A single OG well can generate millions of liters of wastewater, which is a mixture of brine produced from the fractured formations and injected hydraulic fracturing fluids (HFFs). With thousands of wells completed each year...

Catch-at-age data are used to inform important management decisions for recovering populations of Lake Trout Salvelinus namaycush. Age data for Lake Trout are commonly derived from interpretation of annual growth marks (annuli) on the fish’s otoliths. Due to the tendency for annuli to vary in appearance and the subjectivity that is inherent to any age interpretation method, it is...

Crude oil is known to induce developmental defects in teleost fish exposed during early life stages (ELSs). While most studies in recent years have focused on cardiac endpoints, evidence from whole-animal transcriptomic analyses and studies with individual polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) indicate that the developing kidney (i.e., pronephros) is also at risk. Considering the role...

Disturbances such as fire provide an opportunity for invasive plant species to exploit newly created niche space. Whether initial invaders facilitate, compete with, or do not affect later invaders is important to determine in communities affected by multiple invaders. This analysis focuses on the newer invaders Taeniatherum caput-medusae (medusahead) and Ventenata dubia (ventenata) in...

Estimates of parameters that affect population dynamics, including the size at which individuals reproduce, are crucial for efforts aimed at understanding how imperiled species may recover from the numerous threats they face. In this study, we observed loggerhead marine turtles (Caretta caretta) nesting at three sites in the Gulf of Mexico at sizes assumed nonreproductive in this region...

Seawater temperatures are increasing, with many unquantified impacts on marine diseases. While prolonged temperature stress can accelerate host-pathogen interactions, the outcomes in nature are poorly quantified. We monitored eelgrass wasting disease (EWD) from 2013-2017 and correlated mid-summer prevalence of EWD with remotely sensed seawater temperature metrics before, during, and...

Juvenile tree survival will play an important role in the persistence of coniferous forests and woodlands in the southwestern United States (SWUS). Vulnerability to climatic and environmental stress declines as trees grow, such that larger, more deeply rooted juveniles are less likely to experience mortality. It is unclear how juvenile conifers partition the aboveground and belowground...

The disease white-nose syndrome (WNS) was first recognized in upstate New York in 2006 and has since spread across much of the United States (U.S.), causing severe mortality in several North American bat species. To aid in the identification and monitoring of at-risk bat populations, we evaluate factors associated with the presence of the causative fungal agent of WNS, Pseudogymnoascus...