Publications

Life history theory examines how characteristics of organisms, such as age and size at maturity, may vary through natural selection as evolutionary responses that optimize fitness. Here we ask how predictions of age and size at maturity differ for the three classical fitness functions–intrinsic rate of natural increase r, net reproductive rate R0, and reproductive value Vx−for...

Swimming exercise and dissolved oxygen (DO) are important parameters to consider when operating intensive salmonid aquaculture facilities. While previous research has focused on each of these two variables in rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss, studies examining both variables in combination, and their potential interaction, are absent from the scientific literature. Both swimming...

The combined effects of long-term fire suppression, logging, and overgrazing have negatively impacted many southwestern U.S. forests, resulting in decreased habitat quality for wildlife, and more frequent and severe wildfires. In response, land management agencies are implementing large-scale forest restoration treatments, but data on how wildlife respond to restoration treatments and...

Populations of invasive species often spread heterogeneously across a landscape, consisting of local populations that cluster in space but are connected by dispersal. A fundamental dilemma for invasive species control is how to optimally allocate limited fiscal resources across local populations. Theoretical work based on perfect knowledge of demographic connectivity suggests that...

Although ecosystems respond to global change at regional to continental scales (i.e., macroscales), model predictions of ecosystem responses often rely on data from targeted monitoring of a small proportion of sampled ecosystems within a particular geographic area. In this study, we examined how the sampling strategy used to collect data for such models influences predictive performance...

Quantifying the downstream survival of migrating fish past dams is critical for conservation efforts. Regulators require assessments of survival as a condition of operation. Failure to meet an established survival standard may result in required operational or costly structural changes at a facility. Establishing the survival standard, as well as the rules of assessment, is a point of...

The inclusion of passive interrogation antenna (PIA) detection data has promise to increase precision of population abundance estimates (). However, encounter probabilities are often higher for PIAs than for physical capture. If the difference is not accounted for, may be biased. Using simulations, we estimated the magnitude of bias resulting from mixed capture and detection...

We introduced a multilevel model of value shift to describe the changing social context of wildlife conservation. Our model depicts how cultural-level processes driven by modernization (e.g., increased wealth, education, and urbanization) affect changes in individual-level cognition that prompt a shift from domination to mutualism wildlife values. Domination values promote beliefs that...

Population persistence probability is valuable for characterizing risk to species and informing listing and conservation decisions but is challenging to estimate through traditional methods for rare, data-limited species. Modeling approaches have used citizen science data to mitigate data limitations of focal species and better estimate parameters such as occupancy and detection, but...

Remote temperature loggers are often used to measure water temperatures for ecological studies and by regulatory agencies to determine whether water quality standards are being maintained. Equipment specifications are often given a cursory review in the methods; however, the effect of temperature logger model is rarely addressed in the discussion. In a laboratory environment, we compared

Climate-related changes in fish communities can present new challenges for fishery managers who must address declines in cool- and cold-water sportfish while dealing with increased abundance of warm-water sportfish. We used largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides) in Wisconsin lakes as model populations to determine whether angler harvest provides a realistic method for reducing abundance...

Applied ecology is based on an assumption that a management action will result in a predicted outcome. Testing the prediction accuracy of ecological models is the most powerful way of evaluating the knowledge implicit in this cause-effect relationship, however, the prevalence of predictive modeling and prediction testing are spreading slowly in ecology. The challenge of prediction...