Treesearch

Species habitat suitability models rarely incorporate multiple spatial scales or functional shapes of a species’ response to covariates. Optimizing models for these factors may produce more robust, reliable, and informative habitat suitability models, which can be beneficial for the conservation of rare and endangered species, such as tigers (Panthera tigris).

Radiological release incidents can potentially contaminate widespread areas with radioactive materials and decontamination efforts are typically focused on populated areas, which means radionuclides may be left in forested areas for long periods of time. Large wildfires in contaminated forested areas have the potential to reintroduce these radionuclides into the atmosphere and cause exposure to first responders and downwind communities. One important radionuclide contaminant released from radiological incidents is radiocesium (137Cs) due to high yields and its long half-life of 30.2 years....

Viruses in the families Circoviridae and Anelloviridae have circular single-stranded DNA genomes and have been identified in various animal species. Some members of the Circoviridae family such as beak and feather disease and porcine circovirus have been found to cause disease in their host animals. Anelloviruses on the other hand have not been identified to cause disease in their hosts but are highly prevalent in mammalian species. Using a non-invasive sampling approach, we identified novel circovirus and anelloviruses from faecal samples of wolverines dwelling in Montana, USA. Wolverines...

Mountain pine beetle (MPB) (Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins) is a native bark beetle that reproduces in pine (Pinus) species across western North America. High population levels can result in widespread host tree mortality. Over the past 2 decades, MPB has been responsible for pine mortality across millions of forested hectares in the western United States. Although a majority of the pine species found in the western United States are considered hosts to MPB, the host status of Rocky Mountain (RM) bristlecone pine (Pinus aristata) is unclear. We surveyed stands across the range of RM...

Accounting for turbulent temperature and water vapor fluctuations on the vertical flux of CO2 measured by an open-path infrared gas analyzer are commonly known as the Webb-Pearman-Leuning (WPL) corrections. Static pressure fluctuations also affect air sample density, but the magnitude and effect of these changes on CO2 flux is not usually considered.

Most examples of woodpeckers preying on vertebrates are thought to be opportunistic, and the wider role that some woodpeckers play as nest predators of other birds has not been appreciated until recently. To date, predation on nestling birds has been documented in at least 10 woodpecker species, including 5 of the 6 species of Melanerpes that nest in the United States. From 2018 to 2020, we documented 57 instances in which adult Lewis’s Woodpeckers (Melanerpes lewis) provisioned young with nestling passerines (11.9% of 480 food deliveries), which constitutes the first verification of nest...

The application of species distribution models (SDMs) to areas outside of where a model was created allows informed decisions across large spatial scales, yet transferability remains a challenge in ecological modeling. We examined how regional variation in animal-environment relationships influenced model transferability for Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis), with an additional conservation aim of modeling lynx habitat across the northwestern United States. Simultaneously, we explored the effect of sample size from GPS data on SDM model performance and transferability. We used data from three...

Environmental DNA (eDNA) concentration exhibits a positive correlation with organism abundance in nature, but modeling this relationship could be substantially improved by incorporating the biology of eDNA production. A recent model (Molecular Ecology, 10.1111/mec.15543) extended models of physiological allometric scaling to eDNA production, hypothesizing that brook trout eDNA production scales nonlinearly with mass as a power function with scaling coefficients <1 in lakes.

The 2018 Camp fire destroyed the townof Paradise, California and resulted in 82 fatalities, the worstwildfire disaster in the US to date. Future disasters of similar or greatermagnitude are inevitable given predicted climate change but remain highly uncertain in terms of location and timing. As with other natural disasters, simulation models are one of the primary tools to map risk and design prevention strategies. However, risk assessments have focused on estimation ofmean values rather than predicting extreme events that are increasingly becoming a reality in many parts of the globe....

Post-wildfire erosion and the slope instability issues associated with it are a global problem that can negatively affect transportation corridors, the environment, and human life. Currently, mulch treatments are commonly used means of stabilizing wildfire-burnt hillslopes; however, mulch, especially agricultural straw mulch, can pose environmental concerns related to invasive plants. An environmentally friendly treatment, xanthan gum (XG), and a commercial polyacrylamide (PAM) were evaluated as alternatives for stabilizing surficial silty soil that was burnt by the 2018 Mesa Fire in...