Jeffrey Spendelow, Ph.D.
Biography
Jeff Spendelow is a Research Wildlife Biologist with the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center (PWRC) in Laurel, MD where he has worked since 1985. From 1982-1984 he worked as a Wildlife Biologist/Ecologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (USFWS) National Coastal Ecosystems Team in Slidell, LA after receiving his Ph.D. (1980) and B.S. (1972) degrees in Biology from Yale University. In 2008 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Ornithologists’ Union, and he has been a Life Member of the AOU and several other ornithological societies since the 1970s. He has been the Director of PWRC’s Cooperative Roseate Tern Metapopulation Project (the CRTMP) ever since organizing it in 1987, and is the USGS member and Chair of the Technical Working Group of the USFWS’s Recovery Team for the endangered NW Atlantic breeding population of Roseate Terns.
Science and Products
Wind Energy
Demands for alternative energy are increasing and the number of wind farms, both terrestrial and in the marine environment, while serving great benefit to society, have the potential to impact wildlife populations, particularly birds and bats. Studies of the spatio-temporal distribution and abundance of birds can identify sensitive and high–use areas in need of protection, not to mention...
Capture-Mark-Recapture Science
Capture-Mark-Recapture (CMR) can be viewed as an animal survey method in which the count statistic is the total number of animals caught, and the associated detection probability is the probability of capture. The method involves capturing a number of animals, marking them, releasing them back into the population, and then determining the ratio of marked to unmarked animals in the population...
Population Estimation
Determining the size of animal populations is fundamental to wildlife management and how such populations change over time and space can provide insights into ecosystem function and associated processes. Patuxent scientists’ utilize a number of robust statistical techniques to generate these estimates and to improve our understanding of population dynamics.
Waterbirds
Patuxent has a long history of research activities supporting the management and conservation of waterbird populations. Current research interests include studying the movements and migration ecology of sea ducks and other waterbirds along the Atlantic Coast, a long-term demographic study of Roseate Tern populations, and the use of restored island habitats by nesting terns. Patuxent scientists...
Evaluation of Potential Offshore Wind Projects in the Northeastern U.S. on Endangered Roseate Terns: Who is at Risk and When?
The Challenge: Terns in coastal areas of the Northeastern US likely will be impacted by construction and operation of offshore wind turbines. The “Cape Cod & Islands” (CCMA) area of Massachusetts is a particularly important area for the endangered Northwest Atlantic Roseate Tern (ROST) population as most ROSTs from throughout the breeding range (Nova Scotia to Long Island, New York)...
Modeling Sex-specific Demographic Rates in Metapopulations
The Challenge: Research that integrates population dynamics and ecological studies is needed to identify the causal factors involved in population declines and viability. For highly mobile organisms such as birds, “between-patch” movements and the use of different geographic sites and habitats at various stages of the annual cycle can make it difficult to measure the effectiveness of “within-...
Residency, recruitment, and stopover duration of hatch-year Roseate Terns (Sterna dougallii) during the pre-migratory staging period
Avian migratory stopover and staging sites represent important energetic bottlenecks and may influence population dynamics as much as breeding or wintering periods. Roseate terns (Sterna dougallii) are an ideal species to examine staging demography because >70% of the entire endangered northwest Atlantic population stages at accessible...
Davis, Kayla L.; Karpanty, Sarah M.; Spendelow, Jeffrey A.; Cohen, Jonathan B.; Althouse, Melissa A.; Parsons, Katharine C; Luttazi, Cristin F.; Catlin, Daniel H.; Gibson, Daniel Begging behavior as an honest signal of need and parent-offspring association during the post-fledging dependency period
Honest signaling mechanisms can function to appropriate care to hungry offspring and avoid misdirected care of unrelated offspring. Begging, the behavior by which offspring solicit food and parental care, may be an honest signaling mechanism for need, as well as association of parents and offspring. Roseate terns (Sterna dougallii) exhibit...
Davis, Kayla L.; Karpanty, Sarah M.; Spendelow, Jeffrey A.; Cohen, Jonathan B.; Althouse, Melissa A.; Parsons, Katharine C; Luttazi, Cristin F. Evaluating response distances to develop buffer zones for staging terns
Buffer zones, calculated by flight‐initiation distance (FID), are often used to reduce anthropogenic disturbances to wildlife, but FID can vary significantly across life‐history stages. We examined the behavioral effect of potential natural (gulls and shorebirds) and anthropogenic (pedestrians) disturbance sources to staging roseate (Sterna...
Althouse, Melissa A.; Cohen, Jonathan B.; Karpanty, Sarah M.; Spendelow, Jeffrey A.; Davis, Kayla L.; Parsons, Katherine C.; Luttazi, Cristin F. Post-spring migration colony-site prospecting by Roseate Terns (Sterna dougallii)
We recorded banded Roseate Terns (Sterna dougallii) and unbanded individuals mated to banded individuals in May and the first third of June in 2001 and 2002 to quantify post spring migration prospecting by this species at Falkner Island, Connecticut, USA. In 2001, more than one quarter: 34/125 (27.2%) of those observed by 19 May and 38/150 (25.3...
Spendelow, Jeffrey A.; Eichenwald, Adam J. Rapid departure of Roseate Terns (Sterna dougallii) following large-scale nest failure
Nest failure of most pairs of Roseate Terns (Sterna dougallii) at Falkner Island, Connecticut, in 2002-2003 (due mainly to predation by Black-crowned Night-herons [Nycticorax nycticorax]) was followed by the rapid departure of many of the failed individuals in both years. Nine failed pairs (16.7%) stayed while 40 (74.1%) of 54 unsuccessful pairs...
Spendelow, Jeffrey A.; Eichenwald, Adam J. First evidence that paired Roseate Terns may travel together during spring migration
A mated pair of colorbanded Roseate Terns from the Northwest Atlantic Ocean breeding population was photographed on 12 May 2010 while staging near Mayaguez, Puerto Rico. This represents the first evidence that mated pairs of this species may travel together during their northward spring migration
Spendelow, Jeffrey A.; Lugo, Gabriel Rapid 3-week transition from migration to incubation in a female Roseate Tern (Sterna dougallii)
A female Roseate Tern that staged in Puerto Rico on 10 May 2008 on its migration north was first observed in the nesting area at Bird Island, Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts on 21 May. It was incubating a complete clutch of two eggs by 1 June and likely had initiated laying within 20 days of having been in Puerto Rico.
Spendelow, Jeffrey A. Using optimal transport theory to estimate transition probabilities in metapopulation dynamics
This work considers the estimation of transition probabilities associated with populations moving among multiple spatial locations based on numbers of individuals at each location at two points in time. The problem is generally underdetermined as there exists an extremely large number of ways in which individuals can move from one set of locations...
Nichols, Jonathan M.; Spendelow, Jeffrey A.; Nichols, James D. Quantifying the effects of research band resighting activities on staging terns in comparison to other disturbances
Avian research that involves potential disturbance to the study species may have unintended fitness consequences and could lead to biases in measurements of interest. The effects of band resighting on the behavior of mixed-species flocks of staging waterbirds were evaluated against recreational pedestrian activity that was expected to cause...
Althouse, Melissa; Cohen, Jonathan B.; Spendelow, Jeffrey A.; Karpanty, Sarah M.; Davis, Kayla L.; Parsons, Katharine C.; Luttazi, Cristin F. Roseate Tern breeding dispersal and fidelity: Responses to two newly restored colony sites
We used 22 yr of capture–mark–reencounter (CMR) data collected from 1988 to 2009 on about 12,500 birds at what went from three to five coastal colony sites in Massachusetts, New York, and Connecticut, United States, to examine spatial and temporal variation in breeding dispersal/fidelity rates of adult Roseate Terns (Sterna dougallii). At the...
Spendelow, Jeffrey A.; Monticelli, David; Nichols, James D.; Hines, James E.; Nisbet, Ian; Cormons, Grace; Hays, Helen; Hatch, Jeremy; Mostello, Carolyn Prebreeding survival of Roseate Terns Sterna dougallii varies with sex, hatching order and hatching date
Unequal sex ratios can reduce the productivity of animal populations and are especially prevalent among endangered species. A cohort of 333 Roseate Tern Sterna dougallii chicks at a site where the adult sex ratio was skewed towards females was sexed at hatching and followed through fledging and return to the breeding area, and...
Nisbet, Ian C.T.; Monticelli, David; Spendelow, Jeffrey A.; Szczys, Patricia First record of a banded Sandwich Tern (Thalasseus sandvicensis) moving from England to the United States
A Sandwich Tern (Thalasseus sandvicensis sandvicensis) banded as a chick in 2002 at Coquet Island off the northeast coast of Great Britain was observed at two locations on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, USA, in August and September 2013. This is the first record of a banded Sandwich Tern from the United Kingdom being observed in the United States.
Spendelow, Jeffrey A.