Biodiversity Commons^™

Comstock Point, Lubec, Maine - A Natural And Photographic History, Willaim H. Schlesinger, Lisa M. Dellwo

Documents from Environmental Organizations

A natural and photographic history of our lands compiled by Lisa Dellwo and Bill Schlesinger, with the help of many friends and neighbors.

Citizen And Community Science Approaches To Understanding Changes In Coastal Habitats Using Anecdata.Org, Alexis Garretson, Cait Bailey, Ashley Taylor, Alexis Dabulewicz, Beth Bisson, Nathan Dorn, K. Kaczor, Mary Ann Nahf, Hannah Webber, Mark Whiting, Jane Disney

Maine Policy Review

Coastal ecosystems are facing increasing threats from human activities and environmental changes. Climate change, in particular, presents challenges for policymaking as it is causing significant changes to the oceans and coastlines, with social, economic, and environmental impacts on coastal communities. However, there is often a lack of data at the appropriate scales to address these concerns. Online tools that support the collection of citizen science and community science data can provide stakeholders and policymakers with a wealth of information and data on ocean-related topics, such as water quality, marine biodiversity, and ocean health. Citizen science platforms, like Anecdata.org, can facilitate …

Effects Of Large Wood Additions On Basal Resources, Macroinvertebrates, And Ecosystem Processes In The Narraguagus River, Maine, Val Watson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Ecological restoration is an increasingly common practice across ecosystems, and current practices aim to restore the biological and physical processes underlying ecosystem function, often for the sake of endangered higher-level consumers. Studies of restoration outcomes often report few or inconsistent ecological changes, and monitoring of restoration projects rarely measures ecological processes. Monitoring also usually measures outcomes at a single scale, despite the prevalence of scale- dependent phenomena across ecosystems. My thesis uses measurements of ecological processes to assess restoration response and evaluates responses across multiple scales. I focus here on a long-term large wood addition project on the Narraguagus River …

Predicting Marine Teleost Responses To Ocean Warming And Pollution, Akila Harishchandra

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Ocean warming and pollution are two detrimental anthropogenic factors causing rapid marine ecosystem degradation recorded in the past decades. These factors alter the marine environment intolerable for many marine species, forcing them to either adapt or shift their contemporary habitat ranges to reduce the extinction risk embedded with environmental degradation. Estimating marine species’ habitat range shifts, and their potential for developing adaptive mechanisms are critical for ecosystem conservation and management, human health risk assessment, and climate change vulnerability assessments. Given that, for the first chapter of this thesis, we focused on developing a species distribution model (SDM) integrating marine species …

Mp: 766 Roadside Rights-Of-Way As Pollinator Habitat: A Literature Review, Brianne Du Clos

Miscellaneous Publications

Pollination of crops and naturally-occurring flowering plants is a critical ecosystem service provided by managed and unmanaged animal pollinators. Insects are the most studied pollinators, particularly managed honey bees, unmanaged wild bees, and butterflies. Bees and butterflies thrive in early-successional habitat featuring grasses, exposed soil, wildflowers, and shrubs, which is consistently found within transportation and utility rights-of-way (ROW). However, intensive management of ROW can reduce the amount of high-quality pollinator habitat; such practices include frequent mowing, broadcast herbicide use, and planting non-native cool season grasses. Here, we review peer-reviewed academic and non-peer reviewed gray literature describing ROW management practices and …

Assessing The Long-Term Effects Of Natural Disturbance-Based Silvicultural On The Avian Assemblage At The Acadian Forest Ecosystem Research Program, Carl Pohlman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Active forest management alters the resources available to forest-obligate species. Large-scale intensive management practices where timber production is the primary objective can lead to notable ecological changes in forest ecosystems. A key concept of ecological forestry is to design forest management activities to emulate natural disturbance regimes as a way to maintain the ecological integrity of forests. The Acadian Forest Ecosystem Research Program (AFERP) was undertaken as an experimental demonstration of management reflective of the region’s disturbance regime, which typically produces small canopy gaps. AFERP includes nine research areas assigned to three silvicultural treatments: unharvested control, small gap (expanding-group selection …

Effects Of Glacial Stressors On Sperm Maturation In Colonies Of The Red Tree Coral, Primnoa Pacifica, Joshua Lynn

Honors College

The red tree coral, Primnoa pacifica, is a large, colony forming species of cold- water coral which is often an important habitat for many commercially important species of fish and crab. This keystone species is long lived and found at much shallower depths in the fjords of Glacier Bay National Park (GBNP) than elsewhere in the northern Pacific Ocean because of the phenomenon known as deep-water emergence. Due to their proximity to tidewater glaciers in GBNP, corals likely have to endure glacial stressors such as freshwater runoff and sedimentation that is not typical of populations in deeper water, which …

Primnoa Pacifica Reproduction In Shallow Versus Deep Habitats Of Glacier Bay National Park And Preserve, Alaska, Ciara N. Larence

Honors College

Primnoa pacifica is a species of deep-sea cold-water coral that can be found in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve in Alaska. These colonies are important to their ecosystem as they provide habitat for other species living in this area. One thing that makes P. pacifica important to study is that the species displays deep-water emergence. This is a phenomenon where species normally found in deep waters can exist in shallower waters, allowing easier access for research. The purpose of this thesis was to determine if depth effects the reproduction of male P. pacifica colonies. Two colonies from deep depths …

Ensuring A Post-Covid Economic Agenda Tackles Global Biodiversity Loss, Pamela Mcelwee, Esther Turnout, Mireille Chiroleu-Assouline, Jennifer Clapp, Cindy Isenhour, Tim Jackson, Eszter Kelemen, Daniel C. Miller, Graciela Rusch, Joachim H. Spangenberg, Anthony Waldron, Rupert J. Baumgartner, Brent Bleys, Michael W. Howard, Eric Mungatana, Hien Ngo, Irene Ring, Rui Santos

Teaching, Learning & Research Documents

Report that explores how governments can help mitigate ecosystem and species loss through their COVID-19 stimulus and recovery plans.

Distributions And Abundances Of The Red Tide Dinoflagellate Alexandrium Catenella In The Eastern Gulf Of Maine And Bay Of Fundy In Relation To Diatoms In June, July And August Of 2019, Kimberly Lina D'Adamo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A series of three oceanographic survey cruises were conducted in June, July, and August of 2019 in the northeastern Gulf of Maine and Bay of Fundy. Surface water samples were collected and analyzed for enumerations of cell densities of the dinoflagellate Alexandrium catenella in relation to cell densities of diatoms. Hydrographic profiles of temperature, salinity, and nutrients (silicate and nitrate) were also made at each station. Data were analyzed to determine if there was any statistically significant evidence of allelopathic interference imparted by diatoms that impede A. catenella. A. catenella cells were most abundant in June, reaching 6,195 cells per …

Spatial And Temporal Variation In The Aquatic Invertebrate Community Structure Of Rock Pools Along The Penobscot River, Maine, Chase R. Gagne

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Pools of water that form in the fissures and depressions of rock outcrops, known as rock pools, are fairly common aquatic habitats that can easily be found along the rocky banks of many of Maine’s major rivers. In general, rock pools and the aquatic invertebrates inhabiting them have received little research attention and, though ubiquitous, have never been studied in Maine. My research addressed this knowledge gap by surveying 40 rock pools at four sites along the Penobscot River in Maine. The rock pools themselves had highly variable environmental characteristics and differed across sites and over time, especially in hydroperiod. …

Landscape Pattern And Wild Bee Communities In Maine, Brianne Du Clos

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Commercial production of lowbush blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium Aiton) in Maine relies primarily on managed honeybee hives; however, naturally occurring wild bees are more efficient pollinators of the crop. Wild bees have short foraging distances and must nest near crop fields to provide pollination services. After crop bloom, the surrounding landscape must provide sufficient forage to maintain wild bee populations for the remainder of the growing season. Lowbush blueberries in Maine are produced in a mixed-use landscape with two distinct landscape contexts. Here, we document bee communities and habitat resources (nesting and floral) in power line rights-of-way and eight land …

Niche Evolution Along A Gradient Of Ecological Specialization, Meaghan Conway

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The concept of the ecological niche is fundamental to understanding constraints on species distributions in space and time, and in explaining the origin and maintenance of biodiversity. A niche can be broadly defined to include all of the biotic and abiotic conditions that a species requires to persist. Niche breadth, or the degree of specialization, may influence how labile a species niche is, which can have broad implications for species ability to adapt to environmental change, and for explaining patterns of diversification. I investigated mechanism that facilitate or constrain niche evolution at multiple scales. First, I developed an index of …

Repeat Disturbances Have Cumulative Impacts On Stream Communities, Jessica M. Haghkerdar, Jack R. Mclachlan, Alexis Ireland, Hamish S. Greig

Biology and Ecology Faculty Scholarship

1. Climate change has altered disturbance regimes in many ecosystems, and predictions show that these trends are likely to continue. The frequency of disturbance events plays a particularly important role in communities by selecting for disturbance -tolerant taxa.

2. However, ecologists have yet to disentangle the influence of disturbance frequency per se and time since last disturbance, because more frequently disturbed systems have also usually been disturbed more recently. Our understanding of the effects of repeated disturbances is therefore confounded by differences in successional processes.

3. We used in -situ stream mesocosms to isolate and examine the effect of disturbance …

Associations Between Avian Spruce-Fir Species, Harvest Treatments, Vegetation, And Edges, Brian W. Rolek

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Habitat loss is the primary cause of species loss and declines of global biodiversity. Several birds associated with the spruce-fir forest type (hereafter spruce-fir birds) have declining populations across the continent in the Atlantic Northern Forest, and the extent of coniferous forest has declined in some areas. This region is extensively and intensively managed for timber products.

To investigate the influence from harvest treatments on the spruce-fir bird assemblage during the breeding and post-breeding period in lowland conifer and mixed-wood forests, we used avian point count detection data to test for associations between avian assemblages and seven common harvest treatments. …

Climatic Range Filling Of North American Trees, Benjamin Seliger

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Understanding the degree to which species distributions are controlled by climate is crucial for forecasting biodiversity responses to climate change. Climatic equilibrium, when species are found in all places which are climatically suitable, is a fundamental assumption of species distribution models, but there is evidence in support of climate disequilibria in species ranges. Long-lived, sessile organisms such as trees may be especially vulnerable to being outpaced by climate change, and thus prone to disequilibrium. In this dissertation, I tested the degree to which North American trees are in equilibrium with their potential climatic ranges using the ‘range filling’ metric, which …

Wildlife Use Of Vernal Pools In An Urbanizing Landscape With A Focus On Population Vitality Of Vernal Pool-Breeding Amphibians, Carly Jasmine Eakin Phd

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Vernal pools in the northeastern United States provide essential habitat for pool-breeding amphibians and provide resources for other forest-dwelling wildlife. These pools and pool-breeding amphibians in particular are threatened by land conversion associated with urbanization and urban-associated factors. The responses of these amphibians and of birds and mammals using vernal pools to intermediate levels of urban development are largely unknown. I used field observations and lab experiments to study the amphibians, birds, and mammals associated with vernal pools along an urban development gradient in greater Bangor, Maine.

In Chapter 1, I examined bird and mammal use and assemblage composition at …

The Forgotten Cousin In Freshwater Community Ecology: Tidal Freshwater Wetlands, Jack R. Mclachlan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Tidal freshwaters are unique in their placement in the landscape, forming where freshwater riverine flows are sufficient to overwhelm the saline water of the incoming tide, but not strong enough to suppress tidal water-height fluctuations. Tidal freshwaters and their wetlands have been overlooked by freshwater and marine researchers alike; neither discipline considers tidal freshwaters to fall under their purview. Invertebrate communities in tidal freshwaters are thought to be species depauperate; the consensus is that they support fewer taxa than nearby non-tidal freshwaters, but little is known about how these communities are structured. This study investigated how tidal hydrology, an atypical …

Connecting Rivers For Healthy Ocean Fisheries, Catherine Schmitt

Maine Sea Grant Publications

Across Maine, communities and land owners are reconnecting rivers and streams by improving road crossings, fixing broken culverts, and removing dams and other barriers. There are many reasons for doing this work, including preventing costly repairs associated with flooding and washouts, enhancing water quality, increasing wildlife habitat, and restoring fish populations. Connecting Rivers explores some of the ways that streams connect inland lakes and forests and the sea. This first fact sheet in the series focuses on connections between populations of migratory river fish (alewives and blueback herring) and groundfish (e.g., cod).

The Enhancement Of Wild Bees (Hymenoptera: Apoidea) For Pollination Security, Eric M. Venturini

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The acreage of pollinator-dependent crops continues to expand across the globe. Simultaneously, honey bee hives – an annually rented commodity that growers rely on – are more expensive every year and in some cases, scarce. In response, pollinator-dependent growers seek alternative pollinators. One approach is installing bee pasture on farms, a strategy that enables systems-based farmers to become in-situ farm-scale habitat managers. This thesis first presents a review of the literature on bee pasture plantings and provides a brief overview of some methods for assessing their impacts on the pollinator community. There are three major gaps in current bee pasture …

Biogeochemical Hotspots In Forested Landscapes: The Role Of Vernal Pools In Denitrification And Organic Matter, Krista A. Capps, Regina L. Rancatti, Nathan Tomczyk, Aram J K Calhoun, Malcolm L. Hunter Jr.

Publications

Quantifying spatial and temporal heterogeneity in ecosystem processes presents a challenge for conserving ecosystem function across landscapes. In particular, many ecosystems contain small features that play larger roles in ecosystem processes than their size would indicate; thus, they may represent ‘‘hotspots’’ of activity relative to their surroundings. Biogeochemical hotspots are characterized as small features within a landscape that show comparatively high chemical reaction rates. In northeastern forests in North America, vernal pools are abundant, small features that typically fill in spring with snow melt and precipitation and dry by the end of summer. Ephemeral flooding alters soil moisture and the …

Silence Is The Loudest Sound, Emma Christian

Honors College

Rhinoceros poaching is an act of killing a rhinoceros in order to take its horn, which is then used for human consumption or for cultural traditions. Both the Asian and the African rhinoceros are targets because of the demand from China, Vietnam, Yemen, and other countries around the world. Traditional Chinese Medicine practice is the main demand for rhinoceros horn and this demand in rhinoceros horn has caused an increase in the black market. Conservation of the rhinoceros is decreasing primarily because the price of rhinoceros horn is more than double the average household income in South Africa, thus making …

The Complementary Niches Of Anthropocentric And Biocentric Conservationists, Malcolm L. Hunter Jr., Kent H. Redford, David Lindenmayer

Publications

A divergence of values has become apparent in recent debates between conservationists who focus on ecosystem services that can improve human well-being and those who focus on avoiding the extinction of species. These divergent points of view fall along a continuum from anthropocentric to biocentric values, but most conservationists are relatively closer to each other than to the ends of the spectrum. We have some concerns with both positions but emphasize that conservation for both people and all other species will be most effective if conservationists focus on articulating the values they all share, being respectful of divergent values, and …

The Cost Of Useful Knowledge And Collective Action In Three Fisheries, James A. Wilson, James M. Acheson, Teresa Johnson

James Wilson

In a complex environment knowledge is valuable and its acquisition is costly; as a result people are careful about what to learn and how to learn it. We suggest that the dynamics of the “local” environment strongly influences the method that individuals choose to acquire useful knowledge and is one of the principal determinants of the way they compete and cooperate. We focus on theway different environments lead to different costs, especially the relative opportunity costs of search and communication and, consequently, to the emergence of different patterns of persistent cooperation and competition. In predictably regular and in predictably random …

Tb206: Biodiversity Of The Schoodic Peninsula: Results Of The Insect And Arachnid Bioblitzes At The Schoodic District Of Acadia National Park, Maine, Donald S. Chandler, David Manski, Charlene Donahue, Andrei Alyokhin

Technical Bulletins

Bioblitzes have become a popular approach to involve scientists and the public in studying biodiversity. They reinforce the idea that natural areas are resources of scientific and educational value and are a way of engaging the public in experiencing the natural world. A bioblitz is typically conducted over a 24-hour period in a targeted area, with the goal of documenting the presence of as many species as possible. Scientists and “weekend naturalists,” along with other individuals who enjoy being in the field, are asked to attend bioblitzes as volunteers to help in finding and identifying as many species as possible. …

The Cc-Bio Project: Studying The Effects Of Climate Change On Quebec Biodiversity, Dominique Berteaux, Sylvie Blois, Jean-François Angers, Joël Bonin, Nicolas Casajus, Marcel Darveau, François Fournier, Murray Humphries, Brian Mcgill, Jacques Larivée, Travis Logan, Patrick Nantel, Catherine Périé, Frédéric Poisson, David Rodrigue, Sébastien Rouleau, Rouleau Siron, Wilfred Thuiller, Luc Vescovi

Publications

Anticipating the effects of climate change on biodiversity is now critical for managing wild species and ecosystems. Climate change is a global driver and thus affects biodiversity globally. However, land-use planners and natural resource managers need regional or even local predictions. This provides scientists with formidable challenges given the poor documentation of biodiversity and its complex relationships with climate. We are approaching this problem in Quebec, Canada, through the CC-Bio Project (http://cc‑bio.uqar.ca/), using a boundary organization as a catalyst for team work involving climate modelers, biologists, naturalists, and biodiversity managers. In this paper we present the CC-Bio Project and its …

Tb192: The Use Of Glyphosate Herbicides In Managed Forest Ecosystems And Their Effects On Non-Target Organisms With Particular Reference To Ants As Bioindicators, Kerry F.L. Guiseppe, Francis A. Drummond, Constance Stubbs, Stephen Woods

Technical Bulletins

This publication reviews and synthesizes the results of many research studies designed to elucidate the ecological effects of the herbicide glyphosate used in forested landscapes. We have not intended our review to be an exhaustive review of all published studies (both laboratory and field investigations) concerned with faunal and floral glyphosate interactions and the environmental fate of glyphosate. We particularly focused on studies that had relevance to north temperate forest ecosystems and selected published investigations to incorporate into our review that cover a wide range of faunal and floral taxa that might be exposed to herbicides during applications.

Tb191: Conservation And Management Of Native Bees In Cranberry, Jennifer L. Loose, Francis A. Drummond, Constance Stubbs, Stephen Woods

Technical Bulletins

Threats to agriculturally important pollinators have serious implications for human beings. A loss of bees translates to less successful crop pollination, thus reduced yield and poorer quality fruits. Native bees have the potential to serve as commercial pollinators. A diverse pollinator complex comprised of both honey bees and native bees should result in stable pollination levels and should be resistant to threats such as disease, fluctuating honey and crop prices, and honey bee transportation costs. Adding the goal of native bee conservation to land management increases the ecological integrity of an ecosystem by conserving a unique biological interaction that is …

Tb190: Spider Predation In Agroecosystems: Can Spiders Effectively Control Pest Populations., Darlene Maloney, Francis A. Drummond, Randy Alford

Technical Bulletins

Recent trends in agriculture towards reduced pesticide use and ecological sustainability have lead to increased interest in spiders as potential biological control agents. Although the Chinese have augmented spider populations in field crops as a pest management strategy for centuries, much debate remains as to whether spiders will effectively control pest populations in U.S. agricultural ecosystems. This technical bulletin reviews the literature to describe the reduction of insect pest densities by spiders and the effects of pesticides on spiders. In addition to addressing the question of whether spiders can be effective biocontrol agents, the authors outline techniques to conserve and …

Deforestation In Nineteenth-Century Maine: The Record Of Henry David Thoreau, Geoffrey Paul Carpenter

Maine History

Thoreau’s Maine Woods, a record of three trips made between 1846 and 1857, offers a combination of literary metaphor and precise botanical and topographical observation. Comparing Thoreau’s journals with recent advances in forest ecology, author Geoffrey Paul Carpenter reveals a detailed picture of the various ways in which logging activity changed the forests, lakes, and rivers of Maine. Carpenter demonstrates that a precise understanding of forest history depends not only on traditional statistical sources, but also on the subjective personal testimony found in the literary record.