Publications

Multispecies management can contribute to meeting growing challenges of preserving biodiversity, yet current game and threatened species management often focuses on individual species. Satellite imagery available at high spatial and temporal resolution provides a potential tool to overcome the challenge posed by multispecies management of linking patterns of habitat use among species. We...

Individual behaviors are influenced by environmental, genetic, and demographic factors. Some animals choose to live in groups and cooperatively breed, and their behaviors can change depending on dynamic factors such as group size and composition that affect group persistence. In Idaho, USA, gray wolves (Canis lupus) are harvested annually, providing an opportunity to investigate the...

The Northern Pikeminnow Ptychocheilus oregonensis is a piscivorous cyprinid native to western North America. Information on the best structure for estimating the age of Northern Pikeminnows is a key knowledge gap that may limit inquiries on management efforts. Thus, the objective of this study was to evaluate between-reader precision and concordance between age estimates for lapilli...

Silver Carp (Hypophthalmichthys molitrix) are an invasive fish in the Mississippi River Basin. Their rapid expansion over recent decades coupled with extraordinary growth rates have arguably caught many by surprise. Understanding the atypical growth rates that could be the driving force behind the Silver Carp's explosive expansion may be crucial for development of management strategies...

Fisheries encompass humans and fish, but fisheries researchers rarely model human–nature interactions over space and time. I filled this information gap for dolphinfish (Coryphaena hippurus), a popular, widely distributed species that supports industrial, artisanal, recreational, and subsistence fisheries. Dolphinfish human–nature interactions showed a long-term up-and-down pattern in...

Many animals track ephemeral peaks in food abundance and quality that propagate across landscapes. Migrating ungulates, in particular, track waves of newly emerging plants from low-elevation winter ranges to high-elevation summer ranges—known as “green-wave surfing.” Because plants lose crude protein and gain insoluble fiber with maturation, ruminants are expected to exploit peaks in...

United States (U.S.) croplands are ideal recipient environments for solar photovoltaic (PV) energy because they are flat and have a high solar resource. Perceived threats of solar to agriculture have led some stakeholders to suggest that croplands be exclusively used to produce food. However, 12 million hectares of U.S. croplands, an area about the size of New York State, are already...

Biological invasions pose significant risks to ecosystems and native species. Wild pigs (Sus scrofa) are a highly detrimental invasive species in North America, directly and indirectly affecting native species. Co-occurrence of wild pigs and native species may lead to interspecific interactions that alter ecological communities. Accordingly, we investigated spatial and temporal factors...

Mesopredator suppression has implications for community structure, biodiversity, and ecosystem function, but mesopredators with physical defenses may not avoid apex predators. We investigated nine-banded armadillos (Dasypus novemcinctus) in southwestern Oklahoma (USA) to evaluate if a species with physical defenses was influenced by a dominant predator, the coyote (Canis latrans). We...

Gulf ribbed mussels (Geukensia granosissima) act as ecosystem engineers and reside within the marsh platform of saltmarshes across the northern Gulf of Mexico. With climate models projecting increasing temperatures, and more frequent and extreme heat events, these mussels face increasing temperature-related risks. Marsh surface and subsurface (5-cm depth) temperature was measured...

Reservoir predation has been identified as a leading mortality source for smolts migrating through impounded river systems. We investigated smolt predation risk for an endangered Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) population in the Weldon Dam reservoir in the Penobscot River, Maine, USA. In spring 2022, we characterized the fates of 390 tethered smolts. Smolts were exclusively predated by two...

Marine birds in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico have long been poorly studied. Given statutory obligations to protect migratory birds and endangered species, three broad-scale vessel and aerial programs initiated since 2010 have now surveyed the entire northern Gulf. Vessel coverage alone exceeds 700 d and 74,000 km of observer effort using 300-m strip transects. We supplemented these survey...