Publications

Water clarity is a reliable indicator of lake productivity and an ideal metric of regional water quality. Clarity is an indicator of other water quality variables including chlorophyll-a, total phosphorus and trophic status; however, unlike these metrics, clarity can be accurately and efficiently estimated remotely on a regional scale. Remote sensing is useful in regions containing a...

Leopardus braccatus (Cope, 1889) is a small felid—not much larger than a domestic house cat—commonly called the Pantanal cat. No comprehensive surveys have been conducted to determine how many L. braccatus exist in the wild. It is found in humid, warm grasslands and wooded areas of extreme northwestern Argentina, southwestern and south- and north-central (newly reported ranges) Brazil...

Spawning habitat, the cornerstone of self-sustaining, naturally reproducing walleyeSander vitreus populations, has received limited quantitative research. Our goal was to quantitatively describe the structure and quantity of natural walleye spawning habitat and evaluate potential selection of habitat in Big Crooked Lake, Wisconsin. In 2004 and 2005, we located and delineated walleye egg...

The presence of aquatic macrophytes is a key factor in the selection of habitats by fish in floodplain lakes because these plants enhance the physical and biological complexities of aquatic habitats. The seasonal flood pulse may influence this interaction, but there is no information in the literature about the effects that flood events may have on macrophytes assemblages and its...

Gunnison's prairie dogs (Cynomys gunnisoni) are rare, diurnal, colonial, burrowing, ground-dwelling squirrels. Studies of marked individuals living under natural conditions in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s showed that males are heavier than females throughout the year; that adult females living in the same territory are consistently close kin; and that females usually mate with the...

Birds, lizards and insects were surveyed in three sun and three shade coffee plantations in Puerto Rico to provide a comprehensive comparison of biodiversity between plantations types and to identify potential interrelationships (e.g., biological or natural control services) between members of each taxon and coffee pests. Abundance of avian species, including insectivorous species, was

Spring harvest rates of male wild turkeys (Meleagris gallapavo) influence the number and proportion of adult males in the population and turkey population models have treated harvest as additive to other sources of mortality. Therefore, hunting regulations and their effect on spring harvest rates have direct implications for hunter satisfaction. We used tag recovery models to estimate...

Infectious diseases are increasingly recognized as an important force driving population dynamics, conservation biology, and natural selection in wildlife populations. Infectious agents have been implicated in the decline of small or endangered populations and may act to constrain population size, distribution, growth rates, or migration patterns. Further, diseases may provide selective...

American shad Alosa sapidissima are in decline in their native range, and modeling possible management scenarios could help guide their restoration. We developed a density-dependent, deterministic, stage-based matrix model to predict the population-level results of transporting American shad to suitable spawning habitat upstream of dams on the Roanoke River, North Carolina and Virginia...

Occupancy modeling was used to determine (1) if detection probabilities (p) for 7 regionally imperiled Missouri River fishes (Scaphirhynchus albus, Scaphirhynchus platorynchus, Cycleptus elongatus, Sander canadensis, Macrhybopsis aestivalis, Macrhybopsis gelida, and Macrhybopsis meeki) differed among gear types (i.e. stationary gill nets, drifted trammel nets, and otter trawls), and (2)...

Introductions of large, non-native, carnivorous fishes continue to occur worldwide and represent a substantial management concern to global biodiversity. One of the most recent non-native fishes to successfully establish in North America is the northern snakehead (Channa argus), found in the lower Potomac River catchment. Dispersal of the northern snakehead throughout this system has...

Effective conservation of fish species of greatest conservation need (SGCN) requires an understanding of species–habitat relationships and distributional trends. Thus, modeling the distribution of fish species across large spatial scales may be a valuable tool for conservation planning. Our goals were to evaluate the status of 10 fish SGCN in wadeable Iowa streams and to test the...