Articles

The Central American river turtle Dermatemys mawii is a critically endangered species that has incurred substantial losses over the last several decades due to overhunting. This species is now being considered for head-starting programs (i.e. captive breeding of turtles for wild release). However, relatively little is known about their life history characteristics, especially with...

Meat, fruit, seeds and other high-energy bear foods are often highly localized and briefly available and understanding which factors influence bear consumption of these foods is a common focus of bear conservation and ecology. However, the most common bear foods, graminoids and forbs, are more widespread but of lower quality. We poorly understand how herbage consumption impacts bear...

Biological assemblages in streams are affected by a wide variety of physical and chemical stressors associated with land-use development, yet the importance of combinations of different types of stressors is not well known. From 2013 to 2017, the U.S. Geological Survey completed multi-stressor/multi-assemblage stream ecological assessments in five regions of the United States (434...

Drought is an inescapable reality in many regions, including much of the western United States. With climate change, droughts are predicted to intensify and occur more frequently, making the imperative for drought management even greater. Many diverse actors – including private landowners, business owners, scientists, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and managers and policymakers...

Population genomics has significantly increased our ability to make inferences about microevolutionary processes and demographic histories, which have the potential to improve protection and recovery of imperiled species. Freshwater mussels (Bivalvia: Unionida) represent one of the most imperiled groups of organisms globally. Despite systemic decline of mussel abundance and diversity...

In research, sometimes sheer happenstance and serendipity make for an unexpected discovery. Once revealed and if interesting enough, such a finding and its follow-up investigations can lead to advances by others that leave its originators ‘scooped’ and mulling about what next to do with their unpublished data, specifically what journals could it still be published in and be perceived as...

Environmental conditions on Earth are repeated in non-random patterns that often coincide with species from different regions and time periods having consistent combinations of morphological, physiological and behavioral traits. Observation of repeated trait combinations among species confronting similar environmental conditions suggest that adaptive trait combinations are constrained by

Scientific research for more than two centuries has improved our understanding of Earth’s geysers. This knowledge provides insights into volcanic processes, the origin and environmental limits of life on Earth and potentially Mars, and on geysers on icy outer solar system satellites. Continued scientific research will help us understand and protect these natural wonders that attract...

As the climate evolves over the next century, the interaction of accelerating sea level rise (SLR) and storms, combined with confining development and infrastructure, will place greater stresses on physical, ecological, and human systems along the ocean-land margin. Many of these valued coastal systems could reach “tipping points,” at which hazard exposure substantially increases and...

Characterizing variation in plant functional traits is often key to understanding community-level processes and predicting ecosystem responses to environmental change. Trait-based ecology has focused on interspecific trait variation, but sources and consequences of within-species ontogenetic trait variation, particularly during early stages of development, remain understudied.Using a...

The challenges of analyzing bastnaesite (REECO3F) and hydroxylbastnaesite (REECO3OH) include beam sensitivity, quantification of light elements in a heavy element matrix, the presence of elements that cannot be analyzed with EPMA (H), and the use of x-ray lines whose physical constants are not well known. To overcome some of these challenges, Ca, La, Ce, Pr, Nd, and Sm were analyzed at...

Light is a primary constraint on primary production and drives many ecological processes in stream ecosystems, yet light regimes have received considerably less attention than other factors of the stream environment, such as hydrology or nutrient cycling. Light received by streams can be highly heterogeneous in both space and time resulting from changes in topography, channel...