Publications

Trout are socioeconomically and ecologically important in the Greater Yellowstone Area (GYA); yet these fish face numerous threats. Disease may begin to play a larger role in reducing fish populations, partly because many existing threats may interact to exacerbate the frequency, extent, and severity of fish diseases (Lafferty 2009). For example, habitat loss and low summer flows might interact to

This annual report summarizes the results of grizzly bear (Ursus arctos) research and monitoring conducted in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) by the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team (IGBST) during 2018. The research and monitoring program is focused on population estimation and demographics, food monitoring, and habitat monitoring. The report also contains a summary of grizzly bear mana

1. Compensatory growth – when individuals in poor condition grow rapidly to “catch up” to conspecifics – may be a mechanism that allows individuals to tolerate stressful environmental conditions, both abiotic and biotic. This phenomenon has been documented fairly widely in laboratory and field experiments, but evidence for compensatory growth in the wild is scarce. 2. Cutthroat trout (Oncorhync

Strategic conservation efforts for cryptic species, especially bats, are hindered by limited understanding of distribution and population trends. Integrating long‐term encounter surveys with multi‐season occupancy models provides a solution whereby inferences about changing occupancy probabilities and latent changes in abundance can be supported. When harnessed to a Bayesian inferential paradigm,

Understanding how natural and anthropogenic processes affect population dynamics of species with patchy distributions is critical to predicting their responses to environmental changes. Despite considerable evidence that demographic rates and dispersal patterns vary temporally in response to an array of biotic and abiotic processes, few applications of metapopulation theory have sought to explore

The yellow-bellied marmot (Marmota flaviventris) reaches the southern edge of its geographic range in New Mexico, where it is known from the San Juan and Sangre de Cristo Mountains. We provide a synopsis of the geographic range of M. flaviventris in New Mexico and report 5 recent records from the Jemez Mountains, Los Alamos and Sandoval Counties. Of the 5 records from the Jemez Mountains, 3 were o

Population density is an important component of wildlife management decisions, but can be difficult to estimate directly for an itinerant, wide‐ranging species such as the American black bear (Ursus americanus ). In South Carolina, USA, where there has been growth in black bear populations and bear–human‐conflict reports during the past several decades, managers need robust estimates of population

The outbreak of white-nose syndrome (WNS) and the growing awareness of the risks to bats from wind power generating facilities have driven radical changes to North American bat conservation. Over the last decade, formerly common species such as the little brown myotis (Myotis lucifugus) and hoary bat (Lasiurus cinereus) have experienced unprecedented mortality rates and are now facing non-trivial

Mother Nature was not making it easy. It was February 18, 2009, and winds were gusting, sleet was falling, and temperatures were hovering around 40° F. Our crew of 9 which consisted of personnel from the USDA Forest Service Southern Research Station, the Cherokee National Forest, and The University of Tennessee’s Tree Improvement Program, was attempting to establish the first test planting of Amer

Habitat loss and degradation are leading causes of biodiversity declines, therefore assessing the capacity of created mitigation wetlands to replace habitat for wildlife has become a management priority. We used single season occupancy models to compare the occurrence of larvae of four species of pond‐breeding amphibians in wetlands created for mitigation, wetlands impacted by road construction, a

Like many other salmonids, Bull Trout Salvelinus confluentus migratory life-history expressions are becoming increasingly rare. A critical step in effectively refining management and conservation strategies is a robust assessment of the effectiveness of such strategies and key biological information used in monitoring and recovery planning. To address this need, we integrated a variety of method

The costs of invasive species in the United States alone are estimated to exceed US$100 billion per year so a critical tactic in minimizing the costs of invasive species is the development of effective, early-detection systems. To this end, we evaluated the efficacy of adding environmental (e)DNA surveillance to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) streamgage network, which consists of > 8,200 stream