Publications

Catadromous American eel ( Anguilla rostrata ) are native to Maine's Penobscot River watershed and historically have migrated through many of its tributaries prior to extensive damming. Recent restoration efforts, including dam removals, have improved connectivity in the lower reaches of the Penobscot River. Characterizing the extent of the American eel's distribution is important to...

Objective The limited distribution of the Paleback Darter Etheostoma pallididorsum, which is often associated with dynamic headwater streams, makes the species vulnerable to changes in its environment in west-central Arkansas. A detailed understanding of habitat characteristics that support the species at multiple spatial scales is limited. This project assessed the relative influences...

1. Current and accurate information on wildlife populations is integral to successful biodiversity management and conservation globally. Nevertheless, many monitoring programs fail in their attempts to accurately monitor populations of interest due to interlinked issues including insufficient sample sizes, inappropriate duration, lack of reproducibility, and lack of clearly stated...

Diadromous fishes world-wide experienced precipitous declines during the 19th and 20th centuries due to a combination of overfishing, pollution, and freshwater habitat loss through construction of dams (Limburg & Waldman, 2009). Following wide-spread fishing closures and large-scale remediation of many historical pollution sources, dams in coastal rivers remain as the largest tractable...

Freshwater salinization is a major concern in temperate climates where road salt is used as a deicer to manage snow and ice on roadways. In urban and suburban areas, wastewater, weathering of infrastructure, and salting on parking lots and sidewalks can also contribute to salt contamination, but little is known about how well these sources explain variation in stream conductivity and...

Understanding how water moves through a watershed is one of the most fundamental yet often complicated aspects of hydrology, especially in urban areas. Urban infrastructure and water management alter natural hydrological pathways in developed watersheds, which can violate assumptions of a watershed approach to ecosystem science. We focus on two aspects of urban landscapes that often...

River ecosystems are threatened by interactions among river regulation, non-native species, and climate change. Water use has exceeded supply in USA’s Colorado River basin draining its two largest storage reservoirs (Lake Powell and Lake Mead). In 2022, Lake Powell began releasing water from its lower epilimnion into the Grand Canyon segment of the Colorado River, which (1) increased...

Passive acoustic monitoring is a cost-effective, minimally invasive technology commonly used to study behavior and population dynamics of soniferous fish species. To understand the strengths and limitations of acoustic monitoring for this purpose at fish spawning aggregations (FSA) requires an assessment of the variability in aggregation-associated sounds (AAS) as a function of time...

Studies involving individually marked animals provide insights predicated on the assumption marked individuals are accurate models of their unmarked counterparts. Taxa-specific and marker-specific examinations are needed to determine if marked animals are suitable models for the parameter(s) being measured. Our objective was to determine if brightly colored ear tags influenced the...

Introduction American black bears (Ursus americanus) have been documented to have top-down effects, both consumptive (through predation) and nonconsumptive (through fear effects). However, their behavioural and dietary adaptability has led to uncertainty about the conditions under which these may occur.Objectives We aimed to (1) investigate when, where, and how often black bears...

Four species of the fish genus Morone exist in North America and are often the focus of management actions, including propagation and stocking of their hybrids. We have developed an amplicon-based single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping panel that provides the ability to distinguish all four species and the commonly stocked M. chrysops x M. saxatilis hybrid using a set of 47 SNPs...

Globally, agrivoltaics (AV) research has revealed how microclimates created by photovoltaic (PV) panels can be leveraged to promote reciprocal benefits for agricultural land use and PV energy generation. Yet, in regions of the United States where emissions reduction laws are likely to lead to greater PV development on croplands, empirical evaluation of such co-location remain under...