Publications

Central-place foragers can be constrained by the distance between habitats. When an organism relies on a central place for thermal refuge, the distance to food resources can potentially constrain foraging behavior. We investigated the effect of distance between thermal refuges and forage patches of the cold-intolerant marine mammal, the Florida manatee (Trichechus manatus latirostris)...

Worldwide, human activities have modified hydrology and nutrient loading regimes in coastal wetlands. Understanding the interplay between these drivers and subsequent response of wetland plant communities is essential to informing wetland management and restoration efforts. Recent restoration strategies in Louisiana proposes to use sediment diversions from the Mississippi River to build...

The Trojan Y Chromosome strategy (TYC) is a promising eradication method for biological control of nonnative species. The strategy works by manipulating the sex ratio of a population through the introduction of supermales that guarantee male offspring. In the current study, we compare the TYC method with a pure harvesting strategy. We also analyze a hybrid harvesting model that mirrors...

We produced pallid sturgeon Scaphirhynchus albus embryos at five pre‐hatch developmental stages and isolated and quantified genomic DNA from four of the stages using four commercial DNA isolation kits. Genomic DNA prepared using the kit that produced the largest yields and concentrations were used for microsatellite DNA analyses of 10–20 embryos at each of the five developmental stages...

Conservation management often requires decision-making without perfect knowledge of the at-risk species or ecosystem. Species distribution models (SDMs) are useful but largely under-utilized due to model uncertainty. We provide a case study that utilizes an ensemble modeling approach of two independently derived SDMs to explicitly address common modeling impediments and to directly...

On October 29, 2012, storm surge and large waves produced by Hurricane 13 Sandy resulted in the formation of a breach in eastern Fire Island, NY. The goals of this study 14 are to gain a better understanding of the physical processes that govern breach behavior and 15 to assess whether process-based models can be used to forecast the evolution of future 16 breaches. The Wilderness Breach...

Executive Summary The New York-Pennsylvania area has a long history of hydrocarbon extraction, and the addition of shale gas extraction methods contributes to landscape disturbance borne by previously developed oil and non-shale gas resources. The main unconventional extraction method used to extract shale gas from the Marcellus Shale located in New York and Pennsylvania is hydraulic...

In 2016, the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, began a study in Arkansas to investigate possible increasing trends in annual peak streamflow data and the possible resulting increase in the annual exceedance probability flood (AEPF) predictions. Temporal trends of peak streamflow were investigated at...

Herbivory and burrowing by nutria (Myocastor coypus) cause substantial ecological and economic damage. Trapping is a common, effective practice for reducing nutria damage; however, trapping approaches must continually be adapted to keep pace with evolving animal welfare and ethical issues and to more effectively target pest species of interest. Our objective was to evaluate the efficacy...

We provide a history of swamp eel (family Synbranchidae) introductions around the globe and report the first confirmed nonindigenous records of Amphipnous cuchia in the wild. The species, native to Asia, is documented from five sites in the USA: the Passaic River, New Jersey (2007), Lake Needwood, Maryland (2014), a stream in Pennsylvania (2015), the Tittabawassee River, Michigan (2017)...

Black Carp Mylopharyngodon piceus and Grass Carp Ctenopharyngodon idella are morphologically similar species native to eastern Asia and imported to North America as biological control organisms. Preferred identification methods are coloration and pharyngeal tooth form. Grass Carp possess serrated teeth and Black Carp molariform teeth. Examination of pharyngeal teeth causes extensive...

Dust storms are an important environmental problem worldwide. The main sources of dust storms include the Sahara, the Middle East, and central and northeastern Asia. Dust storms originating from these regions can be dispersed across oceans and in some cases globally. They occur throughout the year and vary in frequency and intensity. The biological agents (e.g., fungi, bacteria and...