Clay, P.A., Muehlbauer, J.D., and Doyle, M.W., 2015, Effect of tributary and braided confluences on aquatic macroinvertebrate communities and geomorphology in an alpine river watershed: Freshwater Science, v. 34, no. 3, p. 845-856.
Jeffrey D Muehlbauer, PhD
Jeff is a river and stream ecologist who specializes in macroinvertebrate communities and food webs. His research is focused on linking hydrological and geomorphic conditions in rivers to the structure of aquatic communities.
Biography
Jeff earned his BS in Biology and Chemistry from Northern Arizona University and his MS and PhD in Ecology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has been involved in basic and applied research in a variety of river ecosystems worldwide, including dam removal in Fossil Creek, Arizona, wetland mitigation in North Carolina, and food web studies on the Danube River in Austria/Hungary/Serbia and glacially-fed rivers in Italy.
His current research with USGS explores how physical conditions created by the management of Glen Canyon Dam affect macroinvertebrate communities and food webs within the Colorado River Basin, its riparian zone, and its tributaries.
Additional profiles
Science and Products
Date published: February 9, 2017
Status: Active Invertebrate Drift Downstream of Colorado River Basin Dams
Aquatic invertebrates are critical food for fish and other species that inhabit large rivers. In the Colorado River Basin, invertebrates that get transported down the river (“in the drift”) are particularly important to rainbow trout and other species of interest to recreational users. This research seeks to compare rivers downstream of large dams throughout the Colorado River Basin in order...
Contacts: Jeffrey D Muehlbauer, PhD, Theodore Kennedy, Ph.D.
Date published: January 18, 2017
Status: Active Citizen Science Light Trapping in Grand Canyon
Aquatic insects are commonly used to gauge the health of stream and river ecosystems, yet collecting enough samples to adequately characterize a river segment as long as the Colorado River through Grand Canyon (> 250 miles) would be essentially impossible using traditional sampling methods. Since 2012, our group has been collaborating with river guides, private boaters, and educational...
Contacts: Theodore Kennedy, Ph.D., Jeffrey D Muehlbauer, PhD
Attribution: Ecosystems, Southwest Biological Science Center
Date published: December 23, 2016
Status: Active Understanding Factors Influencing Rainbow Trout Growth in the Colorado River
Rainbow trout is a desirable sport fish that has been introduced in many locations around the world. Although introductions of rainbow trout and other nonnative fishes provide recreational fishing opportunities, they also pose threats to native fish populations. The Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program has tasked scientists and managers with identifying management options that allow...
Date published: December 9, 2016
Status: Active Insect Drift
All aquatic invertebrates drift downstream at some point in their life cycle. Invertebrates may drift to find more preferable habitats, to leave the water during their transition from aquatic larvae to terrestrial adults, or accidentally such as when swept off the river bed by a flood. Regardless, when they enter the drift, invertebrates become particularly susceptible to predation by several...
Contacts: Jeffrey D Muehlbauer, PhD
Attribution: Ecosystems, Southwest Biological Science Center
Date published: December 5, 2016
Status: Active Aquatic Insects
Aquatic insects live in the water as larvae most of their lives, then emerge onto land for a brief period as winged adults. Sampling these emerged adults on land is therefore a useful tool for understanding the condition of the aquatic insect population that is in the water, particularly in large rivers where sampling the larvae on the river bed is impractical. Our group uses a variety of...
Contacts: Theodore Kennedy, Ph.D., Jeffrey D Muehlbauer, PhD
Attribution: Ecosystems, Southwest Biological Science Center
Year Published: 2020
Bug flows: Don’t count your midges until they hatch
Usually when people hear about a “bug problem” it’s due to an undesirable overabundance of insects (think plague of locusts). In the Colorado River in Grand Canyon, however, we are faced with the opposite predicament: the river is essentially devoid of bugs. Aquatic insects are a fundamental component of a healthy river ecosystem. Most aquatic...
Metcalfe, Anya; Muehlbauer, Jeffrey; Ford, Morgan; Kennedy, TheodoreAttribution: Southwest Biological Science Center, Ecosystems
Year Published: 2017
Deleterious effects of net clogging on the quantification of stream drift
Drift studies are central to stream and river ecological research. However, a fundamental aspect of quantifying drift — how net clogging affects the accuracy of results — has been widely ignored. Utilizing approaches from plankton and suspended sediment studies in oceanography and hydrology, we examined the rate and dynamics of net clogging across...
Muehlbauer, Jeffrey D.; Kennedy, Theodore A.; Copp, Adam J.; Sabol, ThomasView Citation
Muehlbauer, J.D., Kennedy, T.A., Copp, A.J., and Sabol, T.A., 2016, Deleterious effects of net clogging on the quantification of stream drift: Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, v. (online), http://dx.doi.org/10.1139/cjfas-2016-0365.
Year Published: 2017
Incorporating temporal heterogeneity in environmental conditions into a somatic growth model
Evaluating environmental effects on fish growth can be challenging because environmental conditions may vary at relatively fine temporal scales compared to sampling occasions. Here we develop a Bayesian state-space growth model to evaluate effects of monthly environmental data on growth of fish that are observed less frequently (e.g., from mark-...
Dzul, Maria C.; Yackulic, Charles B.; Korman, Josh; Yard, Michael D.; Muehlbauer, Jeffrey D.Attribution: Southwest Biological Science Center, Ecosystems, Energy & Wildlife, Southwest, United States of America
View Citation
Dzul, M.C., Yackulic, C.B., Korman, J., Yard, M.D., and Muehlbauer, J.D., 2016 Incorporating temporal heterogeneity in environmental conditions into a somatic growth model: Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, 10.1139/cjfas-2016-0056
Year Published: 2016
Angel lichen moth abundance and morphology data
Two unique datasets on the abundance and morphology of the angel lichen moth ( Cisthene angelus) in Grand Canyon, Arizona, USA were compiled to describe the phenology and life history of this common, but poorly known, species. The abundance data were collected from 2012 to 2013 through a collaboration with river runners in Grand Canyon National...
Metcalfe, Anya; Kennedy, Theodore A.; Muehlbauer, Jeffrey D.Attribution: Southwest Biological Science Center
View Citation
Metcalfe, A.N, Kennedy, T.A. and Muehlbauer, J.D., 2016. Angel Lichen Moth Abundance and Morphology Data, Grand Canyon, AZ, 2012: U.S. Geological Survey data release, http://dx.doi.org/10.5066/F7154F5S
Year Published: 2016
Phenology of the adult angel lichen moth (Cisthene angelus) in Grand Canyon, USA
We investigated the phenology of adult angel lichen moths (Cisthene angelus) along a 364-km long segment of the Colorado River in Grand Canyon, Arizona, USA, using a unique data set of 2,437 light-trap samples collected by citizen scientists. We found that adults of C. angelus were bivoltine from 2012 to 2014. We quantified plasticity in wing...
Metcalfe, Anya; Kennedy, Theodore A.; Muehlbauer, Jeffrey D.View Citation
Metcalfe, A.N., Kennedy, T.A., and Muehlbauer, J.D., 2016, Phenology of the adult angel lichen moth (Cisthene angelus) in Grand Canyon, USA: The Southwestern Naturalist, no. 61, v. 3, p. 233-240, http://dx.doi.org/10.1894/0038-4909-61.3.233
Year Published: 2016
Resource subsidies between stream and terrestrial ecosystems under global change
Streams and adjacent terrestrial ecosystems are characterized by permeable boundaries that are crossed by resource subsidies. Although the importance of these subsidies for riverine ecosystems is increasingly recognized, little is known about how they may be influenced by global environmental change. Drawing from available evidence, in this review...
Larsen, Stefano; Muehlbauer, Jeffrey D.; Marti Roca, Maria EugeniaView Citation
Larsen, S., Muehlbauer, J.D., and Marti, E., 2016, Resource subsidies between stream and terrestrial ecosystems under global change: Global Change Biology, online, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.13182/abstract.
Year Published: 2016
Flow management for hydropower extirpates aquatic insects, undermining river food webs
Dams impound the majority of rivers and provide important societal benefits, especially daily water releases that enable on-peak hydroelectricity generation. Such “hydropeaking” is common worldwide, but its downstream impacts remain unclear. We evaluated the response of aquatic insects, a cornerstone of river food webs, to hydropeaking...
Kennedy, Theodore A.; Muehlbauer, Jeffrey D.; Yackulic, Charles B.; Lytle, D.A.; Miller, S.A.; Dibble, Kimberly L.; Kortenhoeven, Eric W.; Metcalfe, Anya; Baxter, Colden V.Attribution: Biology and Ecosystems, Land Resources, Water, Southwest Biological Science Center, Ecosystems, Energy & Wildlife, Southwest, United States of America
View Citation
Kennedy, T.A., Muehlbauer, J.D., Yackulic, C.B., Lytle, D.A., Miller, S.W., Dibble, K.L., Kortenhoeven, E.W., Metcalfe, A.M., and Baxter, C.V., 2016, Flow Management for Hydropower Extirpates Aquatic Insects, Undermining River Food Webs: Bioscience, online, http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/04/30/biosci.biw059.
Year Published: 2016
Evaluating potential sources of variation in Chironomidae catch rates on sticky traps
Sticky traps are a convenient tool for assessing adult aquatic insect population dynamics, but there are many practical questions about how trap sampling artefacts may affect observed results. Utilising study sites on the Colorado River and two smaller streams in northern Arizona, USA, we evaluated whether catch rates and sex ratios of...
Smith, Joshua T.; Muehlbauer, Jeffrey D.; Kennedy, Theodore A.View Citation
Smith, J.T., Muehlbauer, J.D., and Kennedy, T.A., 2016, Evaluating potential sources of variation in Chironomidae catch rates on sticky traps: Marine and Freshwater Research, http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/MF15189
Year Published: 2014
Building a better sticky trap: description of an easy-to-use trap and pole mount for quantifying the abundance of adult aquatic insects
Insect emergence is a fundamental process in freshwaters. It is a critical life-history stage for aquatic insects and provides an important prey resource for terrestrial and aquatic consumers. Sticky traps are increasingly being used to sample these insects. The most common design consists of an acetate sheet coated with a nondrying adhesive that...
Smith, Joshua T.; Kennedy, Theodore A.; Muehlbauer, Jeffrey D.View Citation
Building a better sticky trap: description of an easy-to-use trap and pole mount for quantifying the abundance of adult aquatic insects; 2014; Article; Journal; Freshwater Science; Smith, Joshua T.; Kennedy, Theodore A.; Muehlbauer, Jeffrey D.
Year Published: 2014
Barcodes are a useful tool for labeling and tracking ecological samples
Barcodes are used to label and track just about everything these days. Look around your office, in your medicine cabinet, at the package you just received in the mail, or on the shelves of any shop in town, and you will immediately grasp the ubiquity of their use. Interestingly, railroads and supermarkets were the early pioneers of barcode...
Copp, Adam J.; Kennedy, Theodore A.; Muehlbauer, Jeffrey D.Attribution: Southwest Biological Science Center, Ecosystems
Pre-USGS Publications
Copp, A.J., Kennedy, T.A., and Muehlbauer, J.D., 2014, Barcodes are a useful tool for labeling and tracking ecological samples: Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, v. 95, no. 3, p. 293–300.
Muehlbauer, J.D., Collins, S.F., Doyle, M.W., and Tockner, K., 2014, How wide is a stream? Spatial extent of the potential “stream signature” in terrestrial food webs using meta-analysis: Ecology, v. 95, no. 1, p. 44–55.
Wang, H., Li, H., Zhang, Z., Muehlbauer, J.D., He, Q., Xu, X., Yue, C., and Jiang, D., 2014, Linking stoichiometric homeostasis of microorganisms with soil phosphorus dynamics in wetlands subjected to microcosm warming: PLoS ONE, v. 9, no. 1, p. e85575.
Riggsbee, J.A., Doyle, M.W., Julian, J.P., Manners, R., Muehlbauer, J.D., Sholtes, J.S., and Small, M.J., 2013, Influence of aquatic and semi-aquatic organisms on channel forms and processes, in Wohl, E., ed., Fluvial Geomorphology: San Diego, California, USA, Academic Press, p. 189-202.
Muehlbauer, J.D., and Doyle, M.W., 2012, Knickpoint effects on macroinvertebrates, sediment, and discharge in urban and forested streams: urbanization outweighs microscale habitat heterogeneity: Freshwater Science, p. 282–295.
Muehlbauer, J.D., Duncan, J.M., and Doyle, M.W., 2012, Benign use of salt slugs on aquatic macroinvertebrates: measuring discharge with salt during an aquatic ecology study: River Research and Applications, v. 28, no. 10, p. 1858-1863.
Muehlbauer, J.D., Doyle, M.W., and Bernhardt, E.S., 2011, Macroinvertebrate community responses to a dewatering disturbance gradient in a restored stream: Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, v. 15, no. 6, p. 1771-1783.
Fuller, R.L., Griego, C., Muehlbauer, J.D., Dennison, J., and Doyle, M.W., 2010, Response of stream macroinvertebrates in flow refugia and high-scour areas to a series of floods: a reciprocal replacement study: Journal of the North American Benthological Society, v. 29, no. 2, p. 750-760.
Muehlbauer, J.D., LeRoy, C.J., Lovett, J.M., Flaccus, K.K., Vlieg, J.K., and Marks, J.C., 2009, Short-term responses of decomposers to flow restoration in Fossil Creek, Arizona, USA: Hydrobiologia, v. 618, p. 35-45.
Joseph, J.W., Odegaard, M.L., Ronnebaum, S.M., Burgess, S.C., Muehlbauer, J., Sherry, A.D., and Newgard, C.B., 2007, Normal flux through ATP-citrate lyase or fatty acid synthase is not required for glucose-stimulated insulin secretion: Journal of Biological Chemistry, v. 282, no. 43, p. 31592-31600.
Date published: May 2, 2016
River Food Webs Threatened by Widespread Hydropower Practice
Alternative Flows Might Mitigate Negative Impacts
Attribution: Southwest, Southwest Biological Science Center