Publications

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) researches the biological diversity and distribution of species to support management, conservation, and resource use decisions. USGS scientists advance detection and monitoring technologies to assess changes in fish and wildlife populations, biodiversity, and the health of ecosystems. The United States is planning to install 30 gigawatts of offshore...

Background Previous work found that numerous genes positively selected within the hoary bat (Lasiurus cinereus) lineage are physically clustered in regions of conserved synteny. Here I further validate and expand on those finding utilizing an updated L. cinereus genome assembly and additional bat species as well as other tetrapod outgroups.Methods A chromosome-level assembly was...

In this paper, we provide new information on the stratigraphy and paleoflora of the Sheep Creek volcanic field in the Alaska Range that bolsters our understanding of a key interval in the tectonic, paleoclimate, and paleoenvironmental history of the northern Cordillera. Although the distribution and basic stratigraphy of these rocks have been previously reported, here we document the...

Background Individual variation in movement strategies of foraging loggerhead turtles have been documented on the scale of tens to hundreds of kilometers within single ocean basins. Use of different strategies among individuals may reflect variations in resources, predation pressure or competition. It is less common for individual turtles to use different foraging strategies on the scale...

There are two species of free-roaming feral equids in North America: horses (Equus caballus) and donkeys or “burros” (E. asinus). Both species were introduced as domestic animals to North America in the early 1500s and currently inhabit rangelands across the western United States, Canada, and all continents except Antarctica. Despite their global distribution, little is known about their...

Increasing atmospheric CO2 is changing the dynamics of tropical savanna vegetation. C3 trees and grasses are known to experience CO2 fertilization, whereas responses to CO2 by C4 grasses are more ambiguous.Here, we sample stable carbon isotope trends in herbarium collections of South African C4 and C3 grasses to reconstruct 13C discrimination.We found that C3 grasses showed no trends in...

No abstract available.

American pikas (Ochotona princeps) are small lagomorphs that live in mountainous talus areas of western North America. Studies on the histopathology of American pikas are limited. We summarize here the clinical histories, and gross and histologic findings of 12 American pikas, including 9 captive (wild-caught) and 3 wild animals. Death was often attributed to stress (transport, handling

The loss of tidal wetlands in the San Francisco Bay estuary have led to declines in native fish presence. Restoration of tidal wetlands in this area has intensified, with a primary goal of increasing the number of native fishes. We compared the presence of longfin smelt in naturally accreted and beneficial dredge reuse wetlands as a measure of successful restoration. We used...

The threat posed by emerging infectious diseases is a major concern for global public health, animal health and food security, and the role of birds in transmission is increasingly under scrutiny. Each year, millions of mass-reared game-farm birds are released into the wild, presenting a unique and a poorly understood risk to wild and susceptible bird populations, and to human health. In

No abstract available.

Genetic and genomic data are collected for a vast array of scientific and applied purposes. Despite mandates for public archiving, data are typically used only by the generating authors. The reuse of genetic and genomic datasets remains uncommon because it is difficult, if not impossible, due to non-standard archiving practices and lack of contextual metadata. But as the new field of...