Melanie Culver, PhD (Former Employee)

Because of the jaguar’s (Panthera onca) endangered status under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973 throughout its range (from Arizona in the north to Argentina in the south), jaguar individuals and populations are monitored to varying degrees throughout their range. Knowledge gained from monitoring jaguars is helpful for wildlife managers who are responsible for conserving this...

Pumas Puma concolor are one of the most studied terrestrial carnivores because of their widespread distribution, substantial ecological impacts, and conflicts with humans. Over the past decade, managing pumas has involved extensive efforts including the use of genetic methods. Microsatellites have been the most commonly used genetic markers; however, technical artifacts and little...

The Arabian oryx (Oryx leucoryx) historically ranged across the Arabian Peninsula and neighboring countries until its extirpation in 1972. In 1963–1964 a captive breeding program for this species was started at the Phoenix Zoo (PHX); it ultimately consisted of 11 animals that became known as the ‘World Herd’. In 1978–1979 a wild population was established at the Shaumari Wildlife Reserve...

Bacterial pathogens of the families Anaplasmataceae and Rickettsiaceae are often spread to humans or other animals from bites from infected arthropod hosts. Recently, an increasing number of studies have implicated migratory birds in the circulation of these pathogens through the spread of arthropod vectors. However, few studies have examined the potential for resident bird populations...

Evolutionary biology often seeks to decipher the drivers of speciation, and much debate persists over the relative importance of isolation and gene flow in the formation of new species. Genetic studies of closely related species can assess if gene flow was present during speciation, because signatures of past introgression often persist in the genome. We test hypotheses on which...

We isolated novel microsatellites from the crested caracara (Caracara cheriway) with a shotgun pyrosequencing approach. We tested 80 loci for polymorphism among 20 individuals from the threatened Florida population. Fourteen loci were polymorphic. The mean number of alleles was 2.21 (range 2–3) and the mean observed heterozygosity was 0.41 (range 0.15–0.65). None of the 14 polymorphic...