Jaime Collazo, PhD (Former Employee)

Effective management of the threatened Antillean manatee (Trichechus manatus manatus) in Puerto Rico requires reliable estimates of population size. Estimates are needed to assess population responses to management actions, and whether recovery objectives have been met. Aerial surveys have been conducted since 1976, but none adjusted for imperfect detection. We summarize surveys since...

Floral traits and rewards are important in mediating interactions between plants and pollinators. Agricultural management practices can affect abiotic factors known to influence floral traits; however, our understanding of the links between agricultural practices and floral trait expression is still poorly understood. Variation in floral morphological, nectar, and pollen traits of two...

Understanding the relative impact of climate change and land cover change on changes in avian distribution has implications for the future course of avian distributions and appropriate management strategies. Due to the dynamic nature of climate change, our goal was to investigate the processes that shape species distributions, rather than the current distributional patterns. To this end...

Effective habitat conservation is predicated on maintaining high levels or increasing local persistence probability of the species it purports to protect. Thus, methodological approaches that improve the inferential value of local persistence are of utmost value to guide conservation planning as they inform area selection processes. Herein we used the painted bunting Passerina ciris, a...

Designing conservation strategies in human-dominated landscapes is challenging, owing to complex human-natural systems and evolving societal values. To meet this challenge, a robust, adaptive strategy should have a process for flexible implementation of incremental actions. We describe a hypothetical example for the Rio Grande de Arecibo watershed and coastal wetlands in Puerto Rico to...

The ratio of juvenile to adult birds in mist-net samples is used to monitor avian productivity, but whether it is a “true” estimate of per capita productivity or an index proportional to productivity depends on whether capture probability is not age-dependent (true estimate) or age difference in capture probability is consistent among years (index). Better understanding of the processes...

Since the early 2000s, there has been a resurgence in shade coffee production on the island of Puerto Rico. The newly restored specialized shade canopy consists of four native tree species, three of which are nitrogen fixers, and is intended to provide 30% shade cover once the trees are matured. Though much is known about the benefits of rustic and traditional shade plantations to coffee

A key component in controlling the spread of an epidemic is deciding where, when and to whom to apply an intervention. We develop a framework for using data to inform these decisions in realtime. We formalize a treatment allocation strategy as a sequence of functions, one per treatment period, that map up‐to‐date information on the spread of an infectious disease to a subset of locations...

Documenting the evolving processes associated with habitat restoration and how long it takes to detect avian demographic responses is crucial to evaluate the success of restoration initiatives and to identify ways to improve their effectiveness. The importance of this endeavor prompted the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service to evaluate...

Painted Buntings (Passerina ciris) have been declining in the southeastern United States since the 1970s. A recent demographic assessment highlighted the importance of estimating demographic parameters, which have received little attention to date. The dearth of information is troublesome because attempts to reverse declining trends require a better understanding of the relationship...

Populations of Eleutherodactylus species in Puerto Rico have declined in recent decades due to habitat loss and long-term climatic changes. The conservation of these habitat specialists requires an understanding of factors influencing their abundance and distribution, which at present is scant. We estimated occupancy probability and the probability of encountering ≥2 individuals of E...

Bees are the predominant pollinating taxa, providing a critical ecosystem service upon which many angiosperms rely for successful reproduction. Available data suggests that bee populations worldwide are declining, but scarce data in tropical regions precludes assessing their status and distribution, impact on ecological services, and response to management actions. Herein, we reviewed...