Animal Sciences Commons^™

Data Repository For "North American Porcupine Distribution In The Pacific Northwest And Evaluation Of A Non-Invasive Monitoring Technique", Cara L. Appel, Katie M. Moriarty, Sean M. Matthews, David S. Green, Stacy Anderson, Evan King, J Scott Yaeger, Jeremy Brown, Claire Bortot, Tim Bean

Research Data Sets

North American Porcupines (Erethizon dorsatum) have a broad geographic distribution across much of the continent, but recent evidence suggests that their populations may be declining in some areas, including the Pacific Northwest. Estimating baseline historical and contemporary distributions of Porcupines is necessary for initiating monitoring efforts and, if necessary, informing strategic conservation actions. We compiled 1905 occurrence records of Porcupines in Washington, Oregon, and northern California from 1908 to 2018. Using maximum entropy modeling (Maxent), we created historical and contemporary distribution models based on Porcupine records from 1981–2010 and 2012–2018, respectively, to match the temporal scale of available …

Employing Natural History Collections In The Aid Of Conservation: Streamlining An Approach To Model Species Distributions En Masse For The Preservation Of Biodiversity, Alice Fornari

Alice Fornari

Using species distribution models (SDMs) in Natural History Collections (NHCs) can influence how humans implement conservation changes in flora and fauna communities and ecosystems. Through the use of legacy data (old NHCs and their associated locality/collection information), data correction (background data or pseudo absences added to presence-only data), and the SDM software, Maxent (and its associated geographic information systems or GIS projected models), it has been shown that it is feasible to create a low budget protocol/setup to project the past, present and future of species population changes. This has been done in the past few decades as more collections …

Employing Natural History Collections In The Aid Of Conservation: Streamlining An Approach To Model Species Distributions En Masse For The Preservation Of Biodiversity, Alice Fornari

Master's Projects and Capstones

Using species distribution models (SDMs) in Natural History Collections (NHCs) can influence how humans implement conservation changes in flora and fauna communities and ecosystems. Through the use of legacy data (old NHCs and their associated locality/collection information), data correction (background data or pseudo absences added to presence-only data), and the SDM software, Maxent (and its associated geographic information systems or GIS projected models), it has been shown that it is feasible to create a low budget protocol/setup to project the past, present and future of species population changes. This has been done in the past few decades as more collections …

Characterizing Habitat Preference In Three Nearshore Reef-Associated Fishes Through Collaborative Research, Public Data, And Open Source Software, Ian D. Kelmartin

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Black rockfish (Sebastes melanops), canary rockfish (S. pinniger), and lingcod (Ophidion elongatus) are important species in Northern California’s nearshore recreational and commercial fisheries. These species are associated with nearshore rocky reefs and are among a suite of species intended to benefit from the establishment of the marine protected area (MPA) network along the Northern California Coast in 2012.

Many aspects of the North Coast’s nearshore ecosystem remain poorly studied, including the spatial distribution and habitat associations of nearshore fish species. This study used data collected from Cape Mendocino State Marine Reserve (SMR), Ten Mile …

Integrating Habitat Suitability Modeling And Radio Telemetry To Describe Habitat Use Of The Western Massasaugas, Sistrurus T. Tergeminus, In Texas, Mitchell R. Barazowski

Biology Theses

Habitat suitability modeling using the software package MaxEnt (Phillips, Anderson, & Schapire, 2006) is a popular method for describing the habitat of rare species. MaxEnt uses “presence only” data to develop models; however presence data are highly skewed towards areas of high detection probability and these areas may not represent the full range of habitat use. Thusly, predictions from models developed using only data from areas with high detection probability may not represent all suitable habitat. This study tested the ability of MaxEnt models developed using three different data sets to accurately describe Western Massasauga (Sistrurus t. tergeminus) habitat at …

Maxent Modeling For Predicting Potential Distribution Of Goitered Gazelle In Central Iran: The Effect Of Extent And Grain Size On Performance Of The Model, Rasoul Khosravi, Mahmoud Reza Hemami, Mansoureh Malekian, Alan Flint, Lorraine Flint

Turkish Journal of Zoology

The spatial scale of environmental layers is an important factor to consider in developing an understanding of ecological processes. This study employed Maxent modeling to investigate the geographic distribution of goitered gazelle, Gazella subgutturosa (Güldenstädt, 1780), in central Iran using uncorrelated variables at a spatial resolution of 250 m. We used spatial downscaling to downscale WorldClim data to 250-m resolution. We evaluated the sensitivity of the model to different grain and extent sizes from 250 m to 3 km. We compared the performance of the model at different scales using suitability indexes (AUC) and predicted habitat areas. Two models performed …

Finding The Needle And The Haystack: New Insights Into Locating Bog Turtles (Glyptemys Muhlenbergii) And Their Habitat In The Southeastern United States, Theresa Sonja Margareta Stratmann

All Theses

Because rare and cryptic species can be difficult to locate, distribution maps for these species are often inaccurate or incomplete. Bog Turtles (Glyptemys muhlenbergii) are emblematic of this challenge. In fact, conducting surveys of known, historical, and potential Bog Turtle habitat is a specific need stated in the Bog Turtle Northern Population Recovery Plan and in most Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategies of states within the southern range. Therefore we examined ways to better locate Bog Turtle habitat and Bog Turtles within that habitat. First we determined a detection probability for a standardized trapping method so we could effectively survey for …