Digital Commons Network^™

Effects Of Deepwater Horizon Oil On Feather Structure And Thermoregulation In Gulls: Does Rehabilitation Work?, Katherine Horak, Nicole L. Barrett, Jeremy W. Ellis, Emma M. Campbell, Nicholas G. Dannemiller, Susan A. Shriner

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Impacts of large-scale oil spills on avian species are far-reaching.While media attention often focuses on lethal impacts, sub-lethal effects and the impacts of rehabilitation receive less attention. The objective of our study was to characterize effects of moderate external oiling and subsequent rehabilitation on feather structure and thermoregulation in gulls. We captured 30 wild ring-billed gulls (Larus delawarensis) and randomly assigned each individual to an experimental group: 1) controls, 2) rehabilitated birds (externally oiled, rehabilitated by washing), or 3) oiled birds (externally oiled, not rehabilitated). We externally oiled birds with weathered MC252 Deepwater Horizon oil (water for controls) …

Fatty Acid Stable Isotopes Add Clarity, But Also Complexity, To Tracing Energy Pathways In Aquatic Food Webs, Ariana M. Chiapella, Martin J. Kainz, Angela L. Strecker

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Tracing the flow of dietary energy sources, especially in systems with a high degree of omnivory, is an ongoing challenge in ecology. In aquatic systems, one of the persistent challenges is in differentiating between autochthonous and allochthonous energy sources to top consumers. Bulk carbon stable isotope values of aquatic and terrestrial prey often overlap, making it difficult to delineate dietary energy pathways in food webs with high allochthonous prey subsidies, such as in many northern temperate waterbodies. We conducted a feeding experiment to explore how fatty acid stable isotopes may overcome the challenge of partitioning autochthonous and allochthonous energy pathways …

Planning For The Peel Food Zone, Heather M. Percy

All other publications

The Planning for the Peel Food Zone project is part of Phase 1 of the Transform Peel initiative.Transform Peel is intended to be a ‘disruptive’ long-term program that supports economic growth, diversification and creates jobs in the Peel region. Transform Peel recognises the importance of protecting the internationally recognised waterways and wetlands of the Peel–Harvey Estuary and aims to halve the nutrient loads entering its waterways from the surrounding catchment.

The $49.3 million Phase 1 program for Transform Peel comprises three main components: Peel Food Zone; Peel Integrated Water Initiative; Peel Business Park.

This report summarises the findings from the …

Natural Resources Condition Assessment, Agate Fossil Beds National Monument (February 2020 Revision), Reilly R. Dibner, Nicole Korfanta, Gary Beauvais

United States National Park Service: Publications

Executive Summary

In collaboration with the National Park Service, the University of Wyoming Ruckelshaus Institute of Environment and Natural Resources and the Wyoming Natural Diversity Database completed the Natural Resource Condition Assessment (NRCA) for Agate Fossil Beds National Monument (NM). The purpose of the NRCA is to provide park leaders and resource managers with information on resource conditions to support near-term planning and management, long-term strategic planning, and effective science communication to decision-makers and the public.

Agate Fossil Beds NM was authorized in 1965 and established in 1997. The purposes of the park include protecting the paleontological resources on the …

Evaluating Artificial Shelter Arrays As A Minimally Invasive Monitoring Tool For The Hellbender Cryptobranchus Alleganiensis, Catherine M. Bodinof Jachowski, Beth E. Ross, William A. Hopkins

Publications

Hellbenders Cryptobranchus alleganiensis are critically imperiled amphibians throughout the eastern USA. Rock-lifting is widely used to monitor hellbenders but can severely disturb habitat. We asked whether artificial shelter occupancy (the proportion of occupied shelters in an array) would function as a proxy for hellbender abundance and thereby serve as a viable alternative to rock-lifting. We hypothesized that shelter occupancy would vary spatially in response to hellbender density, natural shelter density, or both, and would vary temporally with hellbender seasonal activity patterns and time since shelter deployment. We established shelter arrays (n = 30 shelters each) in 6 stream reaches and …

Migratory Flyways May Affect Population Structure In Double‐Crested Cormorants, Steven J.A. Kimble, Brian S. Dorr, Katie C. Hanson-Dorr, Olin E. Rhodes Jr., Travis L. Devault

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Double‐crested cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus) recovered from a demographic bottleneck so well that they are now considered a nuisance species at breeding and wintering grounds across the United States and Canada. Management of this species could be improved by refining genetic population boundaries and assigning individuals to their natal population. Further, recent radio‐telemetry data suggest the existence of Interior and Atlantic migratory flyways, which could reduce gene flow and result in substantial genetic isolation. In this study, we used 1,784 individuals collected across the eastern United States, a large panel of microsatellite markers developed for this species, and individuals banded as …

Rainfall, Precipitation, And Drought Patterns Associated With Wintertime Transmission Of Eastern Equine Encephalitis Virus (Eeev) In Florida, Bestami Cevher

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Eastern Equine encephalitis virus (EEEV) is a highly pathogenic alphavirus that causes disease in humans and horses. EEEV cases are common in the eastern North America, especially in horses in the State of Florida. EEEV cases are most common in Florida during May to August but also occur year-round, unlike most other locations. According to the Florida Department of Health, 65 EEEV horse cases were documented in the winter months between 2005 and 2018. This study investigates the meteorological activities that affect the wintertime transmission of the EEEV virus to horses. In this, we examined meteorological data up to a …

Prey Of Reintroduced Fishers And Their Habitat Relationships In The Cascades T Range, Washington, Mitchell A. Parsons, Jeffrey C. Lewis, Jonathan N. Pauli, Tara Chestnut, Jason I. Ransom, David O. Werntz, Laura R. Prugh

United States National Park Service: Publications

Conservation and recovery of forest carnivores requires an understanding of their habitat requirements, as well as requirements of their prey. In much of the western United States, trapping and habitat loss led to extirpations of fishers (Pekania pennanti) by the mid-20th century, and reintroductions are ongoing to restore fishers to portions of their former range. Fisher recovery in Washington State has been limited by isolation from other populations, but other potentially important factors, such as diet of fishers in this region and prey availability, have not been thoroughly investigated. We collected hair samples from potential prey and fishers for stable …

Before And After The Storm: Interactions Between Tree-Fall Canopy Gaps, Plant Phenology, And Frugivorous Lemurs In Masoala National Park, Madagascar, Monica Sue Mogilewsky

Dissertations and Theses

Madagascar is one of Earth's top biodiversity hotspots, with 80% of life on the island considered endemic. Among the endemic species are lemurs, a diverse group of non-human primates. Unfortunately, Madagascar's diversity, including lemurs, is threatened by habitat degradation and loss. Despite intense anthropogenic pressure over the past 50 years, scientists have not detected any lemur extinctions during this period. Some researchers have proposed that lemurs' adaptations to natural disturbances have provided these taxa resiliency against anthropogenic disturbances. Certainly, Madagascar experiences an extreme disturbance regime: the island experiences an average of over three cyclones a year. These cyclones create numerous, …

Optimal Bait Density For Delivery Of Acute Toxicants To Vertebrate Pests, Kim M. Pepin, Nathan P. Snow, Kurt C. Vercauteren

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Oral baiting is a fundamental method for delivering toxicants to pest species. Planning baiting strategies is challenging because bait-consumption rates depend on dynamic processes including space use and demographics of the target species. To determine cost-effective strategies for optimizing baiting, we developed a spatially explicit model of population dynamics using field-based measures of wild-pig (Sus scrofa) space use, bait consumption, and mortality probabilities. The most cost-effective baiting strategy depended strongly on the population reduction objective and initial density. A wide range of baiting strategies were cost-effective when the objective was 80% population reduction. In contrast, only a narrow range of …

Brodifacoum Residues In Fish Three Years After An Island-Wide Rat Eradication Attempt In The Tropical Pacific, Shane R. Siers, Aaron B. Shiels, Steven F. Volker, Kristen Rex, William C. Pitt

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Invasive rats are known to threaten natural resources and human health and safety. Island-wide rat eradication attempts have been increasing in number and scale during the past several decades, as has the frequency of eradication success. The most common method to remove all rats from an island is to broadcast anticoagulant rodenticide bait into every rat’s home range on the island. Broadcast of toxicants can put humans and other nontarget species in marine and terrestrial environments at risk of exposure. The persistence of anticoagulant residues is somewhat unknown, particularly in marine environments. Three years after ~ 18,000 kg of 25 …

Appalachian Environmental Health Literacy: Building Knowledge And Skills To Protect Health, Anna G. Hoover, Annie Koempel, W. Jay Christian, Kimberly I. Tumlin, Kelly G. Pennell, Steven Evans, Malissa Mcalister, Lindell E. Ormsbee, Dawn Brewer

Journal of Appalachian Health

Environmental health literacy (EHL) is an emerging, multidisciplinary field that promotes understanding of how environmental exposures can affect human health. After discussing the regional relevance of environmental health knowledge and skills, this article describes three ongoing Appalachian projects that are focused on measuring and building EHL.

Sex Ratio Is Variable And Increasingly Male Biased At Two Colonies Of Magellanic Penguins, Natasha J. Gownaris, Pablo García Borboroglu, P. Dee Boersma

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

Sex ratios are commonly skewed and variable in wild populations, but few studies track temporal trends in this demographic parameter. We examined variation in the operational sex ratio at two protected and declining breeding colonies of Magellanic Penguins (Spheniscus magellanicus) in Chubut, Argentina. Penguins from the two colonies, separated by 105 km, migrate north in the non‐breeding season and have overlapping distributions at sea. Conditions during the non‐breeding season can impact long‐term trends in operational sex ratio (i.e., through sex‐specific survival) and interannual variation in operational sex ratio (i.e., through sex‐specific breeding decisions). We found an increasingly male‐biased …

Statistical Analysis Of Nutrient Loads From The Mississippi-Atchafalaya River Basin (Marb) To The Gulf Of Mexico, Phyllis Okwan, Yi Zhen, Huan Feng, Shinjae Yoo, Murty S. Kambhampati, Abreione Walker, Shayne Boykin, Joe Omojola, Noel Blackburn

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This study investigated the annual and seasonal variations in nutrient loads (NO₂⁻ + NO₃⁻ and orthophosphate) delivered to the Gulf of Mexico from the Mississippi-Atchafalaya River Basin (MARB) and examined the water quality variations. The results indicate that (1) annually, the mean NO₂⁻ + NO₃⁻ and orthophosphate loads showed a steady increase during 1996–1999, a persistent level during 2000–2007, and a moderate increase during 2008–2016; (2) seasonally, NO₂⁻ + NO₃⁻ and orthophosphate in MARB in spring and summer were higher than those in autumn and winter. Analysis of …

Plains Zebra (Equus Quagga) Behaviour In A Restored Population Reveals Seasonal Resource Limitations, Charli De Vos, Alison J. Leslie, Jason I. Ransom

United States National Park Service: Publications

A once abundant species, plains zebra (Equus quagga), is declining across much of sub-Saharan Africa. Reintroduction efforts at Majete Wildlife Reserve, Malawi, have resulted in rapid population increases, but little is known about how such populations resemble natural populations socially or behaviourally, and what those attributes may reveal about restoration success. Incorporating behavioural knowledge into conservation efforts is an important tool for managing the effects of habitat fragmentation and resource competition. The aim of this study was to quantify the daylight time budget of both family and bachelor bands of reintroduced plains zebra to determine if such behaviours …

Arjen Y. Hoekstra 1967–2019, Davy Vanham, Mesfin Mekonnen, Ashok K. Chapagain

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

Arjen Hoekstra introduced the water footprint in 20021, building on the concept of virtual water Tony Allan to discuss the role of trade in alleviating water scarcity in the Middle East. He thereby opened a new dimension in the debate around fair and sustainable allocation of freshwater resources. He laid the foundations to show the role of indirect water (that is, water used elsewhere to produce goods we consume) in our daily life beyond our direct use for drinking, cooking or washing. The water footprint is an indicator of direct and indirect water use by a producer or consumer, showing …

Predicting Livestock Depredation Risk By African Lions (Panthera Leo) In A Multi-Use Area Of Northern Tanzania, K. Beattie, E. R. Olson, B. Kissui, A. Kirschbaum, C. Kiffner

United States National Park Service: Publications

Human-wildlife conflicts, especially those involving large carnivores, are of global conservation and livelihood concern and require effective and locally-adapted prevention measures. Risk of lion attack on livestock (i.e. depredation) may vary seasonally and may be associated with variation in wild prey abundance or landscape characteristics. To test these competing hypotheses, we used a resource selection approach, and determined whether prey catchability (indicated by geo-spatial variables), or prey availability (indicated by modeled abundance recorded via camera traps) explained spatial and seasonal variation in livestock depredation risk by African lions on Manyara Ranch Conservancy, a multi-use area in northern Tanzania. Seasonal variation …

Local Adaptation Constrains Drought Tolerance In A Tropical Foundation Tree, Kasey E. Barton, Casey Jones, Kyle F. Edwards, Aaron B. Shiels, Tiffany Knight

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

1. Plant species with broad climatic ranges might be more vulnerable to climate change than previously appreciated due to intraspecific variation in climatic stress tolerance. In tropical forests, drought is increasingly frequent and severe, causing widespread declines and altering community dynamics. Yet, little is known about whether foundation tropical trees vary in drought tolerance throughout their distributions, and how intraspecific variation in drought tolerance might contribute to their vulnerability to climate changE.
2. We tested for local adaptation in seedling emergence and establishment with a full-factorial reciprocal transplant experiment including 27 populations and 109,350 seeds along a 3,500 mm precipitation gradient for …

Swine Slurry Characteristics As Affected By Selected Additives And Disinfectants, Jon Duerschner, Shannon L. Bartelt-Hunt, Kent Eskridge, John E. Gilley, Xu Li, Amy M. Schmidt, Daniel D. Snow

Nebraska Water Center: Faculty Publications

Current swine industry practice is to house animals in confinement facilities which capture and store feces and urine as slurry in pits below the production area. Additives and disinfectants may be introduced into the manure pits. This study was conducted to measure the effects of additives and disinfectants on temporal changes in swine slurry characteristics. Slurry from a commercial swine production facility in southeast Nebraska, USA was collected and transferred to 57 L reactors located within a greenhouse. Selected additives and disinfectants were added to the reactors and physical properties, chemical characteristics, and antibiotic concentrations were monitored for 40 days. …

Niche Modeling Reveals Life History Shifts In Birds At La Brea Over The Last Twenty Millennia, Robert M. Zink, Sebastian Botero-Canola, Helen Martinez, Katelyn M. Herzberg

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

A species presence at a particular site can change over time, resulting in temporally dynamic species pools. Ecological niche models provide estimates of species presence at different time intervals. The avifauna of La Brea includes approximately 120 species dating to approximately 15,000 years ago. Niche models predicted presence at the Last Glacial Maximum for over 90% of 89 landbird species. This confirms that niche modeling produces sensible range estimates at the Last Glacial Maximum. For 97 currently local species that are as yet undocumented at La Brea over 90% were predicted to occur; absence is due to insufficient study, lack …

Sociohydrologic Systems Thinking: An Analysis Of Undergraduate Students’ Operationalization And Modeling Of Coupled Human-Water Systems, Diane Lally, Cory T. Forbes

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

One of the keys to science and environmental literacy is systems thinking. Learning how to think about the interactions between systems, the far-reaching effects of a system, and the dynamic nature of systems are all critical outcomes of science learning. However, students need support to develop systems thinking skills in undergraduate geoscience classrooms. While systems thinking-focused instruction has the potential to benefit student learning, gaps exist in our understanding of students’ use of systems thinking to operationalize and model SHS, as well as their metacognitive evaluation of systems thinking. To address this need, we have designed, implemented, refined, and studied …

An Unseen Synchrony Or Recurrent Resource Pulse Opportunity? Linking Fisheries With Aeroecology, Henry H. Hansen, Mark Pegg, Matthew Van Den Broeke, Doug Watkinson, Eva C. Enders

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Understanding insect and fish interactions from a spatial and temporal perspec-tive can have implications on large-scale phenology in freshwater systems, yet current information is limited. We employed a novel approach of combining information from acoustic telemetry for six freshwater fish species and weather radar to assess the phenology of mayfly emergence and foraging patterns of freshwater fish. We hypothesized that freshwater fish conduct synchronous movements with annual mayfly hatches as a pulse resource opportunity. Gener-alized additive models were developed to assess movement distance as a func-tion of species and time; before, during, and after annual mayfly hatch events. A cross-section …

Drivers Of Long-Term Invertebrate Community Stability In Changing Swedish Lakes, Hannah B. Fried-Petersen, Yimen G. Araya-Ajoy, Martyn N. Futter, David G. Angeler

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Research on ecosystem stability has had a strong focus on local systems. However, environmental change often occurs slowly at broad spatial scales, which requires regional-level assessments of long-term stability. In this study, we assess the stability of macroinvertebrate communities across 105 lakes in the Swedish “lakescape.” Using a hierarchical mixed-model approach, we first evaluate the environmental pressures affecting invertebrate communities in two ecoregions (north, south) using a 23 year time series (1995–2017) and then examine how a set of environmental and physical variables affect the stability of these communities. Results show that lake latitude, size, total phosphorus and alkalinity affect …

Editorial: Operationalizing The Concepts Of Resilience And Resistance For Managing Ecosystems And Species At Risk, Jeanne C. Chambers, Craig R. Allen, Samuel A. Cushman

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Ecological resilience is essential for maintaining ecosystem services in an era of rapid global change, but successful attempts to operationalize it for managing ecosystems at risk have been limited. Clear formulation and application of ecological resilience concepts can guide ecosystem management so that it enhances the capacity of ecosystems to resist and recover from disturbances and provides adaptive space for periods of ecological reorganization. As originally defined, ecological resilience measures the amount of perturbation required to change an ecosystem from one set of processes and structures to a different set of processes and structures, or the amount of disturbance that …

Geographic Variation In The Prnp Gene And Its Promoter, And Their Relationship To Chronic Wasting Disease In North American Deer, Robert M. Zink, Nadje Najar, Hernan Vazquez-Miranda, Brittaney Buchanan, John Loy, Bruce W. Brodersen

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

PRNP genotypes, number of octarepeats (PHGGGWGQ) and indels in the PRNP promoter can influence the progression of prion disease in mammals. We found no relationship between presence of promoter indels in white-tailed deer and mule deer from Nebraska and CWD presence. White-tailed deer with the 95 H allele and G20D mule deer were more likely to be CWD- free, but unlike other studies white-tailed deer with the 96S allele(s) were equally likely to be CWD-free. We provide the first information on PRNP genotypes and indels in the promoter for Key deer (all homozygous 96SS) and Coues deer (lacked 95 H …

Uncovering Unique Plasticity In Life History Of An Endangered Centenarian Fish, Martin J. Hamel, Jonathan J. Spurgeon, Kirk D. Steffensen, Mark A. Pegg

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

the ability to adapt to changing environments is fundamental for species persistence. Both plasticity and genetic selection are potential drivers that allow for traits to be advantageous, thus leading to increases in survival or fitness. Identifying phenotypic plasticity in life history traits of long-lived organisms can be difficult owing to high survival, long generation times, and few studies at sufficient spatial and temporal scales to elicit a plastic response within a population. to begin to understand phenotypic plasticity of a long-lived freshwater fish in response to environmental conditions, we used a long-term data set consisting of over 1,200 mark-recapture events …

Catfish Population Characteristics Among River Segments With Altered Fluvial Geomorphic Conditions In The Missouri River, Nebraska, Usa, Martin J. Hamel, Jonathan J. Spurgeon, Mark A. Pegg

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Alteration of river systems around the world has created novel environments that have been fragmented, homogenized, or transformed from their natural state, thus posing challenges for understanding how fish populations function. The Missouri River has undergone significant alteration through reservoir construction and channelization. Channel Catfish Ictalurus punctatus and Flathead Catfish Pylodictis olivaris both reside in various fragmented sections of the river, and there is a substantial gap in knowledge of how catfishes synchronously function in this modified system. From 2009 to 2018, we assessed catfishes with baited hoop nets and low-frequency electrofishing among four different areas: upper and lower unchannelized …

Panarchy: Opportunities And Challenges For Ecosystem Management, Ahjond Garmestani, Dirac Twidwell, David G. Angeler, Shana Sundstrom, Chris Barichievy, Brian C. Chaffin, Tarsha Eason, Nick Graham, Dean Granholm, Lance Gunderson, Melinda Knutson, Kirsty L. Nash, R John Nelson, Magnus Nystrom, Trisha L. Spanbauer, Craig A. Stow, Craig R. Allen

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Addressing unexpected events and uncertainty represents one of the grand challenges of the Anthropocene, yet ecosystem management is constrained by existing policy and laws that were not formulated to deal with today’s accelerating rates of environmental change. In many cases, managing for simple regulatory standards has resulted in adverse outcomes, necessitating innovative approaches for dealing with complex social–ecological problems. We highlight a project in the US Great Plains where panarchy – a conceptual framework that emerged from resilience – was implemented at project onset to address the continued inability to halt large-scale transition from grass-to-tree dominance in central North America. …

Camera Traps Detect Prey Of Northern Carnivores, David A. Keiter, Brent R. Patterson, Carol Dersch, Bob Elliott, Arthur R. Rodgers, John F. Benson

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Use of camera traps for non-invasive data collection is increasingly common in wildlife studies. This technique presents a valuable, but generally unexploited, opportunity to learn about carnivore diet through direct observations of predators with prey. To highlight this potential, we present a collection of photographic observations from Michipicoten Island, ON, Canada, that improve our knowledge of the diets of northern carnivores. These include the first documentation of Vulpes vulpes (Red Fox) consumption of a Colaptes auratus (Northern Flicker) and the first photographic evidence of wintertime consumption of a Lithobates sp. (frog) by a Mustela erminea (Short-tailed Weasel). We discuss the …

Survival And Competing Mortality Risks Of Mountain Lions In A Major Metropolitan Area, John F. Benson, Jeff A. Sikich, Seth P.D. Riley

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Understanding natural and human-caused mortality for top predators persisting in human-dominated landscapes is critical for conserving their populations. We estimated survival and cause-specific mortality rates and investigated factors influencing mortality risk of mountain lions by radio-tracking 58 individuals (33 males, 25 females) across the highly fragmented landscape in greater Los Angeles, California from 2002 to 2019. Mortality risk did not differ strongly between subadults (annual survival [ŝ]=0.68, SE=0.08) and adults (ŝ=0.81, SE=0.04). However, the different age-classes were subjected to mortality risks from different sources as subadults were more likely to be killed by conspecifics, whereas adults were more likely to …