Publications

1. The effects of changing climate and disturbance on mountain forest carbon stocks vary with tree species distributions and over elevational gradients. Warming can increase carbon uptake by stimulating productivity at high elevations but also enhance carbon release by increasing respiration and the frequency, intensity, and size of wildfires. 2. To understand the consequences of climate...

The potential to provide inferences about fish abundance from environmental (e)DNA samples has generated great interest. However, the accuracy of these abundance estimates is often low and variable across species and space. A plausible refinement is the use of common aquatic habitat monitoring data to account for attributes that influence eDNA dynamics. We therefore evaluated the...

Riparian forests play key roles in protecting biodiversity and water resources, making them priorities for conservation in human-dominated landscapes, but fragmentation associated with expanding tropical croplands threatens their ecological integrity. We compared the structure of tropical riparian forests within intact and cropland catchments in a region of intensive soybean production...

Echinoderms such as sea urchins are important in marine ecosystems, particularly as grazers, and unhealthy sea urchins can have important ecological implications. For instance, unexplained mortalities of Diadema antillarum in the Caribbean were followed by algal overgrowth and subsequent collapse of coral reef ecosystems. Unfortunately, few tools exist to evaluate echinoderm health...

The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States and its watershed includes river drainages in six states and the District of Columbia. Sportfishing is of major economic interest, however, the rivers within the watershed provide numerous other ecological, recreational, cultural and economic benefits, as well as serving as a drinking water source for millions of people...

Channel Island foxes (Urocyon littoralis) live on six of the eight California Channel Islands, and each island is inhabited by a distinct subspecies. Until recently, four of these subspecies were listed under the Endangered Species Act as endangered. Although three of the four subspecies have been delisted, and one subspecies was downlisted to threatened, all subspecies are still...

Sylvatic plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis and transmitted by fleas, occurs in prairie dogs of the western United States. Outbreaks can devastate prairie dog communities, often causing nearly 100% mortality. Three competent flea vectors, prairie dog specialists Oropsylla hirsuta and O. tuberculata, and generalist Pulex simulans, are found on prairie dogs and in their...

We describe a case of brood parasitism of a Greater Sage-Grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus; hereafter, sage-grouse) nest by California Quail (Callipepla californica; hereafter, quail) in southwestern Idaho during 2019. We observed one quail egg in the parasitized nest; the egg partially hatched, but the chick was dead upon the final nest check. Of the 6 sage-grouse eggs in the nest, only...

Asian carps continue to expand their range in North America, necessitating efforts to limit the spread and establishment of reproducing populations. Mississippi River Lock and Dam 19 is a high-head dam that represents a population ‘pinch-point’ as passage through the lock chamber is the only means by which fishes can complete upstream movement. As such, this location could be a pivotal...

An understanding of how undesirable and desirable fish species respond behaviorally to turbulent flow in fishways would guide development of selective fish passage techniques. We applied high-resolution computational fluid dynamics modeling and competing risks analysis towards the development of predictive selective passage models. Sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus; an invasive fish in the...

Overall, the status of seabirds was fair to good in the WGOA in 2020, with limited data available from Middleton Island, Cook Inlet, and the Kodiak Archipelago (Figure 63). Colony attendance remains low in some populations compared to historic levels, and some colonies were newly abandoned. However, when birds did arrive to breed, reproductive success generally appeared fair to good for...

The movement patterns of birds across a landscape are often highly variable and influenced by complex interactions between individuals and environments. Because periods of movement can be marked by high mortality, especially among juvenile birds, understanding these patterns may be vital for the conservation of many bird species. However, these patterns can be challenging to quantify. We...