Articles

Southern fox squirrels (Sciurus niger niger) have been declining due to habitat fragmentation, cover type conversion, and fire suppression in the Southeast. A decrease in growing season burns has led to hardwood encroachment and forest mesophication that benefit the competing eastern gray squirrels (S. carolinensis). In the southern Coastal Plain and Piedmont of Virginia, these pattern...

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service allows acoustical surveys and automated identification software to determine the presence of the endangered northern long-eared bat (Myotis septentrionalis) and Indiana bat (Myotis sodalis). Analytical software is required to assess presence probability on a site-night basis using a maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) that accounts for interspecific bat

Understanding the relationships of biotic and abiotic factors to seasonal activity at hibernacula is important for the conservation of bats impacted by white-nose syndrome (WNS). Research on the relative and probable activity patterns of the federally endangered northern long-eared bat (Myotis septentrionalis) primarily has focused on summer maternity colonies, whereas surveys at...

Conservation of bats declining from white-nose syndrome (WNS) impacts requires an understanding of both temporal and landscape-level habitat relationships. Traditionally, much of the research on bat ecology has focused on behavior of summer maternity colonies within species’ distribution cores, including that of the endangered northern long-eared bat (Myotis septentrionalis). To further...

1. The occupancy modelling framework offers tremendous flexibility in estimating species abundance and distribution patterns while accounting for imperfect detection, and has seen rapid growth and adoption since its introduction at the beginning of the century. 2. At the same time, in an era of big data, there are increasing demands on developing quantitative skills and proficiency in...

Throughout much of the eastern U.S., many forested ecosystems have lost large amounts of core forest areas due to land-use change, isolating wildlife in forest fragments. The eastern spotted skunk (Spilogale putorius) is considered a species of conservation concern in Virginia, where populations are restricted to spatially disjunct forest patches in the central Appalachian Mountains. We...

Observations in 2022 of intertidal and subtidal foraminiferal faunas at four localities along the central-eastern side of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada, and molecular analyses have documented the first occurrence of the nonindigenous Asian species Ammonia confertitesta Zheng in the northwestern Pacific Ocean. The species was present at three of these localities: Davis Lagoon...

Environmental exposure data are a key component of chemical and ecological assessments, supporting and guiding environmental management decisions and regulations. Measures taken to protect the environment based on exposure data can have social and economic implications. Flawed information may lead to measures being taken in the wrong place or to important action not being taken. Although...

Context Plant communities vary both abruptly and gradually over time but differentiating between types of change can be difficult with existing classification and ordination methods. Structural topic modeling (STRUTMO), a text mining analysis, offers a flexible methodology for analyzing both types of temporal trends.Objectives Our objectives were to (1) identify post-fire dominant...

Measurement of planktonic chlorophyll-a—a proxy for algal biomass—in rivers may represent local production or algae transported from upstream, confounding understanding of algal bloom development in flowing waters. We modeled 3 years of chlorophyll-a transport through a 394-km portion of the Illinois River and found that although algal biomass is longitudinally widespread, most net...

We more accurately locate the boundary between current practice and research priorities regarding climate change scenario planning in U.S. federal land management agencies by supplementing the characterization in a recent article (“Understanding perceptions of climate change scenario planning in United States public land management agencies”) of its use in the U.S. National Park Service

Predators of Nerodia clarkii are suspected to include larger species of crabs, fish, wading birds, snakes, alligators, and crocodiles. To our knowledge, there have only been two published observations of predation on N. clarkii, including a predation attempt from a Callinectes sapidus (Blue Crab) in Mississippi, USA and a successful predation by a Grus americana (Whooping Crane) in Texas...