Publications

The Atlantic, or American, horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus) has existed largely unchanged for over 100 million years. Millions of individuals are commonly observed ashore in spring and summer months during spawning events along the entire North American coastline expanding from the East to the Gulf coasts of the United States and Mexico. Other species can be found in the Indian and...

No abstract available.

A primary focus of the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) Colorado Plateau Native Plant Program (CPNPP) is to identify and develop appropriate native plant materials (NPMs) for current and future restoration projects. Multiple efforts have characterized the myriad challenges inherent in providing appropriate seed resources to enable effective, widespread restoration and have identified...

Usually when people hear about a “bug problem” it’s due to an undesirable overabundance of insects (think plague of locusts). In the Colorado River in Grand Canyon, however, we are faced with the opposite predicament: the river is essentially devoid of bugs. Aquatic insects are a fundamental component of a healthy river ecosystem. Most aquatic insects spend their juvenile life stages...

Diamondback terrapins (Malaclemys terrapin) are distributed along the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico (GoM) coasts of the U.S.A. (Hart et al. 2014. Conserv. Genet. DOI 10.1007/s10592-014-0563-6). Under consideration for listing in Florida and proposed for Appendix II listing by the U.S. at CoP16 (CITES), terrapin populations are declining in many parts of their range due to drowning in crab...

The imperative for finding, cataloging, and understanding continental margin diversity derives from the many key functions, goods and services provided by margin ecosystems and by an increasingly deleterious human footprint on our continental slopes (Levin and Dayton 2009). Progress in seafloor mapping technology and direct observation has revealed unexpected heterogeneity, with a mosaic...

Population viability analysis (PVA) is a widely used tool that applies demographic data in simulation frameworks to assess extinction risk for species or populations. It is used in diverse conservation applications, including evaluating management effectiveness, relative risk of threats, and potential changes to protective status (Beissinger & McCullough, 2002), and can be a critical...

Accurate and timely data regarding freshwater fish communities is important for informed decision-making by local, state, tribal, and federal land and resource managers; however, conducting traditional gear-based fish surveys can be an expensive and time-consuming process, particularly in remote areas, like those that characterize much of Alaska. To help address this challenge, we...

Lampricide concentrations in whole larval sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) carcasses collected after lampricide treatments were determined to support risk assessment for non-target organisms that may consume lampricide-laden carcasses. Dead larvae were collected by Sea Lamprey Control personnel following the Ford River (Delta County, Michigan) 4.1 mg·L-1 3-trifluoromethyl-4-nitrophenol...

Environmental breakdown of plastics produces synthetic microfibers, a class of microplastics that are most prevalent in surface waters. A main source of these pollutants is wastewater treatment plants which discharge into surface waters, including those that flow into Lake Michigan. Microplastics can settle into aquatic sediment or exist for lengths of time in the swash zone of the lakes...

In response to a co-occurring non-native scale infestation and Phragmites australis dieback in southeast Louisiana, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) satellite mapping was implemented to track P. australis condition in the lower Mississippi River Delta. While the NDVI mapping successfully documented relative condition changes, identification of cause required a quantitative...

The brown-headed cowbird (Molothrus ater; cowbird) is unique among North American blackbirds (Icteridae) because it is managed to mitigate the negative effects on endangered songbirds and economic losses in agricultural crops. Cowbird brood parasitism can further affect species that are considered threatened or endangered due to anthropogenic land uses. Historically, cowbirds have often...