Publications

Context The Rainwater Basin in south-central Nebraska once supported a complex network of ~ 12,000 spatially-isolated playa wetlands, but ~ 90% have been lost since European settlement. Future losses are likely and expected reductions in connectivity could further isolate populations, increasing local extinction rates of many wetland species. However, to what extent future losses will...

Newly emerging plants provide the best forage for herbivores. To exploit this fleeting resource, migrating herbivores align their movements to surf the wave of spring green-up. With new technology to track migrating animals, the Green Wave Hypothesis has steadily gained empirical support across a diversity of migratory taxa. This hypothesis assumes the green wave is controlled by...

Translocation of isolated species into suitable habitats may help secure vulnerable, geographically limited species. Due to the decline of Wyoming Hornyhead Chub Nocomis biguttatus, conservation actions such as translocation of populations within the plausible historical range are being considered to improve population redundancy and resiliency to disturbance events. Translocation of...

Lidar from small unoccupied aerial systems (UAS) is a viable method for collecting geospatial data associated with a wide variety of applications. Point clouds from UAS lidar require a means for accuracy assessment, calibration, and adjustment. In order to carry out these procedures, specific locations within the point cloud must be precisely found. To do this, artificial targets may be...

We compared the influence of biological traits (morphology, physiology, reproduction, and life history), ecological traits (geographic distribution, habitat associations, food habits), and introduction attributes (propagule pressure, human use of a species, residence time) on invasion success of native and introduced stream fishes during the colonisation and spread stages in an...

Recreational angler surveys typically collect information on how anglers access a fishery. Yet, it is unclear how this information is useful for fisheries management and conservation. The objective of this study was to compare behavior (e.g., party size, time fished, and numbers of fish released and harvested) of bank and boat anglers, representing two angler-access types. Bank and boat...

Fluxes of materials or organisms across ecological boundaries, often termed “resource subsidies,” directly affect recipient food webs. Few studies have addressed how such direct responses in one ecosystem may, in turn, influence the fluxes of materials or organisms to other habitats or the potential for feedback relationships to occur among ecosystems. As part of a large-scale, multi...

Aim Conservation of highly mobile species often requires identifying locations or time periods of elevated vulnerability. Since both extrinsic habitat conditions and intrinsic behavioural and energetic requirements contribute to habitat use at the landscape scale, identifying spatial or temporal foci for conservation intervention requires understanding how habitat needs and distributions...

Animal migrations are ecologically, culturally, and economically important. Ungulate populations in many parts of Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas migrate long distances to access seasonally available resources, traversing vast landscapes in large numbers. Yet some migrations are declining, raising concerns among scientists and natural resource managers. We synthesize recent...

Larval fish ecology is poorly characterized because sampling is difficult and tools for phenotypically identifying larvae are poorly developed. While DNA barcoding can help address the latter problem, ‘universal’ primers do not work for all fish species. The Roanoke River in the southeastern United States includes seven darters (Family Percide: Tribe Etheostomatini). We made 393...

Increasing frequency and severity of wildfire may jeopardize persistence of large tracts of late seral forest, raising concerns over population viability of forest-dependent species like the Northern Goshawk (Accipiter gentilis). We tracked 20 adult Northern Goshawks with GPS loggers over 4 years to investigate roosting (nocturnal) and foraging (diurnal) habitat selection in a...

Faced with limitations in data availability, funding, and time constraints, ecologists are often tasked with making predictions beyond the range of their data. In ecological studies, it is not always obvious when and where extrapolation occurs because of the multivariate nature of the data. Previous work on identifying extrapolation has focused on univariate response data, but these...