Hardin Waddle, Ph.D.

The Cuban Treefrog (Osteopilus septentrionalis) was first introduced to Florida at Key West. Since this introduction, Cuban Treefrogs have spread to Miami and are now established throughout most of peninsular Florida. Cuban Treefrogs can become very abundant in areas they colonize. Several reasons contribute to their success, including a generalist diet, high fecundity and the ability to...

Though a third of amphibian species worldwide are thought to be imperiled, existing assessments simply categorize extinction risk, providing little information on the rate of population losses. We conducted the first analysis of the rate of change in the probability that amphibians occupy ponds and other comparable habitat features across the United States. We found that overall...

The Mississippi Alluvial Valley (MAV) originally consisted of nearly contiguous bottomland hardwood (BLH) forest encompassing approximately 10 million hectares. Currently, only 20–25% of the historical BLH forests remain in small patches fragmented by agricultural lands. The Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP) was established to restore and protect the functions and values of wetlands in...

Native to Cuba, the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands, the Cuban Treefrog (CTF) is an invasive species in Florida, with the ability to inflict serious ecological damage to invaded habitats. By examining the diet of the CTF, a known predator of native frogs, better predictions may be made of the impacts on native species and ecosystems. From 2002 - 2003, CTF diet was investigated in south...

Welcome to the inaugural issue of ARMI's Annual Update. This update provides highlights and significant milestones of this innovative program. ARMI is uniquely qualified to provide research and monitoring results that are scalable from local to national levels, and are useful to resource managers. ARMI has produced nearly 400 peer-reviewed publications, including 18 in 2011. Some of...

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Effective monitoring programs are designed to track changes in the distribution, occurrence, and abundance of species. We developed an extension of Royle and Kéry's (2007) single species model to estimate simultaneously temporal changes in probabilities of detection, occupancy, colonization, extinction, and species turnover using data on calling anuran amphibians, collected from 2002 to...

Amphibians are a diverse group of animals that includes frogs, toads, and salamanders. They are adapted to living in a variety of habitats, but most require water for at least one life stage. Amphibians have recently become a worldwide conservation concern because of declines and extinctions even in remote protected areas previously thought to be safe from the pressures of habitat loss...

Florida is home to several introduced animal species, especially in the southern portion of the state. Most introduced species are restricted to the urban and suburban areas along the coasts, but some species, like the Cuban Treefrog (Osteopilus septentrionalis), are locally abundant in natural protected areas. Although Cuban Treefrogs are known predators of native treefrog species as...

Turtles are linked to energetic food webs as both consumers of plants and animals and prey for many species. Turtle biomass in freshwater systems can be an order of magnitude greater than that of endotherms. Therefore, declines in freshwater turtle populations can change energy transfer in freshwater systems. Here we report on a mark–recapture study at a lake and adjacent borrow pit in a...

The Mississippi Alluvial Valley (MAV) is the Nation?s largest floodplain and this once predominantly forested ecosystem provided significant habitat for a diverse flora and fauna, sequestered carbon in trees and soil, and stored floodwater, sediments, and nutrients within the floodplain. This landscape has been substantially altered by the conversion of nearly 75% of the riparian forests...

Models currently used to estimate patterns of species co‐occurrence while accounting for errors in detection of species can be difficult to fit when the effects of covariates on species occurrence probabilities are included. The source of the estimation problems is the particular parameterization used to specify species co‐occurrence probability. We develop a new parameterization for...