Publications

The umbrella species concept is often used as a tool to guide management decisions and focus efforts towards one focal species whose habitat needs overlap that of other species. We assessed this concept in the context of an agriculturally dominant landscape using one of the most well-studied avian species in North America as a target for conservation efforts: Northern Bobwhite (Colinus...

Hatchery supplementation is frequently employed during the conservation and recovery of imperilled salmon populations. At the smolt stage, hatchery rearing practices often produce individuals that are larger than wild conspecifics. Under this ‘bigger is better’ strategy, it is assumed that larger fish are less susceptible to predation during migration. We tested this hypothesis on...

This fact sheet provides a 10-year overview of the U.S. Geological Survey Cooperative Research Units program. It highlights long term accomplishments for the program's mission of applied research, graduate education and technical assistance to the partners.

Although sculpin can play important ecological roles, serving as abundant key meso-predators in freshwater aquatic systems, much remains to be learned about their development and ecology. Depth discrete light traps effectively captured larval sculpin from Lookout Point Reservoir in the Willamette Basin, Oregon, USA. We confirm that these larvae were Prickly Sculpin (Cottus asper) based...

Wetland restoration on agricultural land to enhance wildlife habitat through the Wetland Reserve Easement (WRE) program has substantially increased wetland area within the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley (LMAV). Studies assessing avian response to wetland restoration often focus on specific communities during one season such as passerines in spring or waterfowl during winter. However...

Catch-and-release regulations in recreational fisheries have been implemented for decades with the intention of allowing fishing while reducing fishing mortality. In addition, voluntary catch-and-release behaviors are increasingly common. Social and scientific interest in fish handling practices in catch-and-release fisheries as they relate to stress, reflex impairment, reproductive...

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) is a prion disease that affects Cervidae species, and is the only known prion disease transmitted among wildlife species. The key pathological feature is the conversion of the normal prion protein (PrPC) misfolding into abnormal forms (PrPSc), triggering the onset of CWD infections. The misfolding can generate distinct PrPSc conformations (strains) giving...

Introduction: Myxobolus cerebralis, the parasite responsible for salmonid whirling disease, was unintentionally introduced to and became established in Colorado in the 1990s. Mortality of young-of-year fish due to infection by M. cerebralis resulted in recruitment failure and subsequent significant declines in Rainbow Trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) populations. The complex multistage...

The greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus: hereafter sage-grouse) population in Modoc County California is geographically isolated and contains a single lek (from 56 leks in the 1940s), despite significant efforts to increase the population through translocations and habitat improvement. Repeated wildfire within the landscape has led to an increase in invasive annual grasses and...

Urban wildlife species have the potential to serve as links in disease transmission between wildlife, humans and domestic animals at the wildland–urban interface (WUI), contributing to both sustained cross-species transmission of pathogens and the emergence of diseases in susceptible populations. However, the relative roles of host and environmental factors in shaping the composition of...

Spatiotemporal causal inference methods are needed to detect the effect of interventions on indirectly measured epidemiological outcomes that go beyond studying spatiotemporal correlations. Chronic wasting disease (CWD) causes neurological degeneration and eventual death to white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in Wisconsin. Targeted culling involves removing deer after traditional...

Increasing the quantity and quality of mark-reencounter data can be important when individual identification data are needed to address research or management questions. Physical recapture methods tend to be labor-intensive and therefore expensive, while remote detection methods are not easily applied to all taxa or are proprietary and thus difficult to customize. However, partnerships...