Articles

Developing an understanding of factors that influence the accumulation and magnification of heavy metals in fish of the Laurentian Great Lakes is central to managing ecosystem and human health. We measured muscle tissue concentrations of heavy metals in Lake Michigan prey fish that vary in habitat use, diet, and trophic position, including alewife, bloater, deepwater sculpin, round goby...

Common ravens (Corvus corax; ravens) are a behaviorally flexible nest predator of several avian species, including species of conservation concern. Movement patterns based on life history phases, particularly territoriality of breeding birds and transiency of nonbreeding birds, are thought to influence the frequency and efficacy of nest predation. As such, predicting where on the...

Hydrodynamics control the movement of water and material within and among habitats, where time-scales of mixing can exert bottom-up regulatory effects on aquatic ecosystems through their influence on primary production. The San Francisco Estuary (estuary) is a low-productivity ecosystem, which is in part responsible for constraining higher trophic levels, including fishes. Many research...

During the Last Interglacial, approximately 129 to 116 ka (thousand years ago), the Arctic summer climate was warmer than the present, and the Greenland Ice Sheet retreated to a smaller extent than its current state. Previous model-derived and geological reconstruction estimates of the sea-level contribution of the Greenland Ice Sheet during the Last Interglacial vary widely. Here, we...

The Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument on board the MSL rover Curiosity has collected a very large and unique dataset of in-situ spectra and images of Mars since landing in August 2012. More than 800,000 single shot LIBS (laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy) spectra measured on more than 2,500 individual targets were returned so far by ChemCam. Such a dataset is ideally suited...

Bar-tailed Godwits Limosa lapponica baueri breed in Alaska and spend the nonbreeding season primarily in eastern Australia and New Zealand. Long-term declines spurred recent surveys at nonbreeding sites that yielded a revised population estimate of ~126,000 godwits. We conducted aerial surveys for Bar-tailed Godwits in 2018 and 2019 at pre-migratory staging sites in western Alaska...

Climate change poses an increasing threat to achieving development goals and is often considered in development plans and project designs. However, there have been challenges in the effective implementation of those plans, particularly in the sustained engagement of the communities to undertake adaptive actions, but also due to insufficient scientific information to inform management...

Shorebirds have been banded for decades and monitoring programs have helped to accumulate large band-encounter datasets from across the globe; however, many of these datasets are left largely unused, particularly those collected by citizen scientists. These datasets can provide valuable insight into the migration and movement strategies of shorebirds and the threats they face throughout...

Florida's Big Bend region hosts the second largest concentration of breeding American Oystercatchers in the state, but reproductive success is low. Nest site characteristics and predation were examined to determine their influence on survival of nests and broods at two areas in the southern Big Bend (Cedar Key and Barge Canal). The probability of a nest surviving in Cedar Key was low (x̄...

Halogenated organic compounds (HOCs) in marine species collected from the Atlantic Ocean [3 shortfin mako (Isurus oxyrinchus) and 1 porbeagle (Lamna nasus)], and 12 sea turtles collected from the Pacific Ocean [3 loggerhead (Caretta caretta), 3 green (Chelonia mydas), 3 olive ridley (Lepidochelys olivacea), and 3 hawksbill (Eretmochelys imbricata)] were analyzed with a nontargeted...

Contaminants of emerging concern (CECs; e.g., pharmaceuticals, flame retardants, pesticides, and industrial chemicals) are omnipresent throughout tributaries to the Great Lakes. Furthermore, CECs are often present at concentrations that are potentially hazardous to aquatic species. Since 2010, we characterized the presence of CECs at 309 sites within 47 Great Lakes tributaries and...

Declines of many bumble bee species have raised concerns because of their importance as pollinators and potential harbingers of declines among other insect taxa. At present, bumble bee conservation is predominantly focused on midsummer flower restoration in open habitats. However, a growing body of evidence suggests that forests may play an important role in bumble bee life history...