Publications

Intensive forest management may influence the availability of suitable den sites for large den-seeking species, such as Procyon lotor (Raccoon). As part of a Raccoon ecology study on an industrial forest in the Allegheny Mountains of central West Virginia, we radio-tracked 32 Raccoons to 175 diurnal den sites to determine relative use of dens that included cavity trees, rock dens, log...

Accessing and effectively sampling the off-channel habitats that are considered crucial for early life stages of freshwater fishes constitute a difficult challenge when common ichthyoplankton survey methods, such as push nets, are used. We describe a new method of deploying push nets from jet-propelled kayaks to enable the sampling of previously inaccessible off-channel habitats. The...

Successfully managing fisheries and controlling the spread of invasive species depends on the ability to describe and predict angler behavior. However, finite resources restrict conventional survey approaches and tend to produce retrospective data that are limited in time or space and rely on intentions or attitudes rather than actual behavior. In this study, we used three years of...

Summary The evaluation of the age and growth of animal populations is essential for understanding and predicting how populations will respond to changes in environmental conditions and anthropogenic stressors. We used a novel, von Bertalanffy hierarchical modelling approach to quantify relationships between the growth of three freshwater mussel species and various site- and watershed...

Eastern Spadefoots (Scaphiopus holbrookii) are probably one of the least-understood amphibian species in the United States. In New England, populations are localized and it is likely that some populations go undocumented because of the species' cryptic habits. We used passive integrated transponders (PIT tags) to monitor burrow emergence with the aid of continuously running, stationary...

Human impacts on the environment are multifaceted and can occur across distinct spatiotemporal scales. Ecological responses to environmental change are therefore difficult to predict, and entail large degrees of uncertainty. Such uncertainty requires robust tools for management to sustain ecosystem goods and services and maintain resilient ecosystems.We propose an approach based on...

In highly managed reservoir systems, species interactions within novel fish assemblages can be difficult to predict. In high-elevation Scofield Reservoir in Utah the unintentional introduction of Utah Chub Gila atraria and subsequent population expansion prompted a shift from stocking exclusively Rainbow Trout Oncorhynchus mykiss to include tiger trout (female Brown Trout Salmo trutta ×...

Overabundant populations of ungulates have caused environmental degradation and loss of biological diversity in ecosystems throughout the world. Culling or regulated harvest is often used to control overabundant species. These methods are difficult to implement in national parks, other types of conservation reserves, or in residential areas where public hunting may be forbidden by policy...

In 1988–1989, 32 bobcats Lynx rufus were reintroduced to Cumberland Island (CUIS), Georgia, USA, from which they had previously been extirpated. They were monitored intensively for 3 years immediately post-reintroduction, but no estimation of the size or genetic diversity of the population had been conducted in over 20 years since reintroduction. We returned to CUIS in 2012 to estimate...

Our findings reveal evidence for skipped spawning in a potamodromous cyprinid, humpback chub (HBC; Gila cypha ). Using closed robust design mark-recapture models, we found, on average, spawning HBC transition to the skipped spawning state () with a probability of 0.45 (95% CRI (i.e. credible interval): 0.10, 0.80) and skipped spawners remain in the skipped spawning state () with a...

Harvest regulations for Black Crappie Pomoxis nigromaculatus and Yellow Perch Perca flavescens in the northern USA and Canada have not been thoroughly evaluated, and specific guidance regarding where minimum length limits (MLLs) might improve these fisheries is lacking. We examined whether: (1) transitioning from an aggregate statewide daily creel limit of 25 panfish to species-specific...

No abstract available