Treesearch

Occupancy modeling is a widely used analytical technique for assessing species distributions and range dynamics. However, occupancy analyses frequently ignore variation in abundance of occupied sites, even though site abundances affect many of the parameters being estimated (e.g., extinction, colonization, detection probability). We introduce a new model (“dynamic N-occupancy”) capable of providing accurate estimates of local abundance, population gains (reproduction/immigration), and apparent survival probabilities while accounting for imperfect detection using only detection/nondetection...

This special issue of Urban Ecosystems contains a series of papers related to assessing urban metabolism in Syracuse, NY. These papers were developed under the Urban Long-Term Research Area Exploratory Awards Program funded by the National Science Foundation. Objectives of this two-year project (2009–2011) in Syracuse, NY were to investigate: a) changes in urban metabolism and the urban forest ecosystem, b) spatial and temporal dynamics related to water and air quality, and c) how human preferences can influence green infrastructure implementation and outcomes.

Questions: Urban ecosystems present an opportunity to study ecological communities in the context of unprecedented environmental change. In the face of urban land conversion, ecologists observe new patterns of species composition, dominance, behaviour and dispersal.We propose a hypothetical socioeconomic template that describes a gradient in human investment in community composition to aid in organizing the human role in shaping urban biodiversity. We asked: (1) what is the relative magnitude of taxonomic and functional turnover of urban woody plant communities across different land-use...

Aim. We propose and test a climate tolerance and trait choice hypothesis of urban macroecological variation in which strong filtering associated with low winter temperatures restricts urban biodiversity while weak filtering associated with warmer temperatures and irrigation allows dispersal of species from a global source pool, thereby increasing urban biodiversity. Location. Twenty cities across the USA and Canada. Methods. We examined variation in tree community taxonomic diversity, origins and production of an aesthetic ecosystem service trait in a cross-section of urban field surveys....

Cerambycid beetles (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae) can locate suitable hosts and mates by sensing pheromones and plant volatiles. Many cerambycid pheromone components have been identified and are now produced synthetically for trap lures. The range over which these lures attract cerambycids within a forest, and the tendency for cerambycids to move out of a forest in response to lures, have not been explored previously. We conducted two field experiments using baited and unbaited panel traps in northern Delaware to investigate these questions. Within forest fragments, unbaited traps that were 2...

Monitoring studies often use marked animals to estimate population abundance at small spatial scales. However, at smaller scales, occupancy sampling, which uses detection/nondetection data, may be useful where sites are approximately territories, and occupancy dynamics should be strongly correlated with population dynamics. Occupancy monitoring has advantages in that it is less expensive and invasive, and marked animals are not needed. Here, we used empirical data to determine whether and when change in occupancy is a good proxy for population change for a territorial species. As part of...

The use of spring prescribed fires to reduce accumulated fuel loads in western forests and facilitate the return of natural fire regimes is a controversial topic. While spring burns can be effective at reducing fuel loads and restoring heterogeneous landscapes, concerns exist over the potential impacts of unnaturally-timed fires to native species. To protect native wildlife from disturbance during critical periods, limited operating periods (LOPs) are often implemented. However when LOPs for multiple species are combined into an integrated management plan, very few time windows for...

Loss of habitat to urbanization is a primary cause of population declines as human-dominated landscapes expand at increasing rates. Understanding how the relative effects of different conservation strategies is important to slow population declines for species in urban landscapes. We studied the wood thrush Hylocichla mustelina, a declining forest-breeding Neotropical migratory species, and umbrella species for forest-breeding songbirds, within the urbanized mid-Atlantic United States. We integrated 40 years of demographic data with contemporary metapopulation model simulations of breeding...

This study documented the current status of wood pallet repair in the United States by identifying the types of processing and equipment usage in repair operations from an automation prespective. The wood pallet repair firms included in the sudy received an average of approximately 1.28 million cores (i.e., used pallets) for recovery in 2012. A majority of the cores received were stringer-style pallets. The most common pallet size received and repaired was 48 x 40 inch. The most commonly used stringer repair method was the application of companion stringers. It was found that most firms...

Ethanol and hexane mixture agent microwave-assisted extraction (MAE) method was conducted to extract peony (Paeonia suffruticosa Andr.) seed oil (PSO). The aim of the study was to optimise the extraction for both yield and energy consumption in mixture agent MAE. The highest oil yield (34.49%) and lowest unit energy consumption (14 125.4 J g -1) were obtained under optimum extraction condition: solid-liquid ratio 0.37 g mL -1, extraction time 3.72 min, extraction temperature 80.92 °C, ethanol ratio 20.00%. GC–MS results showed that unsaturated fatty acids (UFAs) accounted for 88.60% of...