Publications

The genetic composition of an individual can markedly affect its survival, reproduction, and ultimately fitness. As some wildlife populations become smaller, conserving genetic diversity will be a conservation challenge. Many imperiled species are already supported through population augmentation efforts and we often do not know if or how genetic diversity is maintained in translocated...

Site fidelity, or the behavior of returning to previously visited locations, has been observed across taxa and ecosystems. By developing familiarity with a particular location, site fidelity provides a range of benefits and is advantageous in stable or predictable environments. However, the Anthropocene is characterized by rates of environmental change that outpace the evolutionary...

Rapid recession of glaciers and snowfields is threatening the habitats of cold-water biodiversity worldwide. In many ice-sourced headwaters of western North America, stoneflies in the genus Lednia (Plecoptera: Nemouridae) are a prominent member of the invertebrate community. With a broad distribution in mountain streams and close ties to declining glacier cover, Lednia has emerged as a...

The lesser prairie-chicken (Tympanuchus pallidicinctus) is a species of conservation concern on the Southern High Plains of Texas and New Mexico, USA. Because fragmentation and isolation have increased since pre-settlement, dispersal through this heterogeneous landscape may be constrained, with serious implications for conservation and management of this species. Our objectives were to...

Smallmouth bass (Micropterus dolomieu) are a globally introduced fish species that have experienced widespread range expansions in recent decades and which can have deleterious effects on native fish communities. Rapidly assessing their expansions will aid conservation and management actions geared towards controlling their spread and mitigating their impacts. Smallmouth bass have...

Walleye Sander vitreus and Yellow Perch Perca flavescens are culturally, economically, and ecologically significant fish species in North America that are affected by drivers of global change. Here, we review and synthesize the published literature documenting the effects of ecosystem changes on Walleye and Yellow Perch. We focus on four drivers: climate (including temperature and...

The size of an ecosystem affects ecological interactions, but less is known about how ecosystem size may affect social interactions. We posit that ecosystem size could serve as a basis for understanding and contextualizing social interactions, connecting how ecosystem size influences natural resource investment decisions and the use of ecosystem services. We leverage international...

Brook Trout Salvelinus fontinalis have faced significant declines throughout their native range and have been stocked in Midwestern waters since the late 1800s to offset such losses. Several studies have investigated the genetic effects of these stockings, but these efforts have been confined to relatively small spatial scales. In this study, we compiled 8,454 Brook Trout microsatellite...

During the breeding season, Kirtland’s Warblers (Setophaga kirtlandii) are strongly associated with young jack pine (Pinus banksiana) forests in northern Lower Michigan, USA. Since 2007, the species has been breeding in unusual habitat, red pine (Pinus resinosa) dominated plantations, in central Wisconsin, USA. Kirtland’s Warbler productivity and habitat use in red pine is not well...

We found that the absence of existing conservation measures would reduce wintering mallard population size by ~70-80%, underlining the importance of current wetland easements for waterfowl foraging. Under standard conditions, the partial active flooding of easements later in the season and the upgrading of unmanaged wetlands to managed status resulted in greatest mallard populations...

Free-ranging dogs (FRDs), are a problem in several countries, with impacts on humans, domestic animals, and wildlife, although increasing evidence suggests that most FRDs are owned. Therefore, understanding dog ownership on a fine scale is critical. The main objectives of this study were to explore dog management in rural localities from central Chile focusing on modeling owner-related...

Understanding the processes governing population dynamics is important for effective conservation and environmental management. Disentangling the relative role of density-dependent versus density-independent processes on population dynamics is often made difficult by the inability to control for abiotic or biotic factors, but long-term datasets are invaluable in this pursuit. We used a...