Publications
USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center staff publish results of their research in USGS series reports and in peer-reviewed journals. Publication links are below. Information on all USGS publications can be found at the USGS Publications Warehouse.
Filter Total Items: 1907
Biodiversity–productivity relationships in a natural grassland community vary under diversity loss scenarios
Understanding the biodiversity–productivity relationship and underlying mechanisms in natural ecosystems under realistic diversity loss scenarios remains a major challenge for ecologists despite its importance for predicting impacts of rapid loss of biodiversity worldwide. Here we report the results of a plant functional group (PFG) removal experiment conducted on the Mongolian Plateau, the larges
Authors
Qingmin Pan, Amy Symstad, Yongfei Bai, Jianhui Huang, Jianguo Wu, Shahid Naeem, Dima Chen, Dashuan Tian, Qibing Wang, Xingguo Han
Land management strategies influence soil organic carbon stocks of prairie potholes of North America
Soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks of Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) wetlands in the central plains of Canada and the United States are highly variable due to natural variation in biota, soils, climate, hydrology, and topography. Land-use history (cropland, grassland) and land-management practices (drainage, restoration) also affect SOC stocks. We conducted a region-wide assessment of wetland SOC stoc
Authors
Sheel Bansal, Brian Tangen, Robert A. Gleason, Pascal Badiou, Irena F. Creed
Patch utilization and flower visitations by wild bees in a honey bee-dominated, grassland landscape
Understanding habitat needs and patch utilization of wild and managed bees has been identified as a national research priority in the United States. We used occupancy models to investigate patterns of bee use across 1030 transects spanning a gradient of floral resource abundance and richness and distance from apiaries in the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) of the United States. Estimates of transect
Authors
Clint R.V. Otto, Larissa L. Bailey, Autumn H. Smart
An assessment of current wolf Canis lupus domestication hypotheses based on wolf ecology and behaviour
The dog was the first domesticated animal. Its derivation from grey wolves Canis lupus is important to the study of mammalian domestication, and wolf domestication is an active area of investigation. Recent popular books have promoted a hypothesis that wolves domesticated themselves as opposed to the earliest hypothesis that featured pup collection, adoption, and artificial selection. Continuing r
Authors
L. David Mech, Luc A. A. Janssens
Farmland in U.S. Conservation Reserve Program has unique floral composition that promotes bee summer foraging
Bee conservation is a topic of global concern, particularly in agroecosystems where their contribution to crop pollination is highly valued. Over a decade ago, bees and other pollinators were made a priority of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), a U.S. federal program that pays land owners to establish a conservation cover, typically grassland, on environmentally sensitive farmland. Despite l
Authors
Gabriela Quinlan, Megan Milbrath, Clint R.V. Otto, Rufus Isaacs
Honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies benefit from grassland/ pasture while bumble bee (Bombus impatiens) colonies in the same landscapes benefit from non-corn/soybean cropland
Agriculturally important commercially managed pollinators including honey bees (Apis mellifera L., 1758) and bumble bees (Bombus impatiens Cresson, 1863) rely on the surrounding landscape to fulfill their dietary needs. A previous study in Europe demonstrated that managed honey bee foragers and unmanaged native bumble bee foragers are associated with different land uses. However, it is unclear how
Authors
Gabriela Quinlan, Megan Milbrath, Clint R.V. Otto, Rufus Isaacs
Honey bee foraged pollen reveals temporal changes in pollen protein content and changes in forager choice for abundant versus high protein flowers
Protein derived from pollen is an essential component of healthy bee diets. Protein content in honey bee foraged-pollen varies temporally and spatially, but the drivers underlying this variation remain poorly characterized. We assessed the temporal and spatial variation in honey bee collected pollen in 12 Michigan apiaries over 3 summers (2015–2017). We simultaneously monitored forage in flowering
Authors
Gabriela Quinlan, Megan Milbrath, Clint R.V. Otto, Autumn Smart, Deborah Iwanowicz, Rufus Isaacs, Robert S. Cornman
Acoustic interaction between a pair of owls and a wolf
During summer 2019, we recorded an apparent vocal interaction, lasting just under 4 min, between a pair of Great Horned Owls (Bubo virginianus) and a gray wolf (Canis lupus) in Yellowstone National Park. To our knowledge, this is the first report of such an acoustic interaction in the scientific literature. The increased use of passive acoustic recorders, which record spontaneous vocalizations emi
Authors
Bárbara Martí-Domken, Vicente Palacios, Shannon Barber-Meyer
Pollinator communities vary with vegetation structure and time since management within regenerating timber harvests of the Central Appalachian Mountains
Native pollinator populations across the United States are increasingly threatened by a multitude of ecological stressors. Although the drivers behind pollinator population declines are varied, habitat loss/degradation remains one of the most important threats. Forested landscapes, where the impacts of habitat loss/degradation are minimized, are known to support robust pollinator populations in ea
Authors
Codey L. Mathis, Darin J. McNeil, Monica R. Lee, Christina M. Grozinger, David I. King, Clint R.V. Otto, Jeffery A. Larkin
Distributions of native and invasive Typha (cattail) throughout the Prairie Pothole Region of North America
The Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) of North America has experienced extreme changes in wetland habitat due to proliferation of invasive plants. Typha × glauca is a highly competitive hybrid between native T. latifolia and non-native T. angustifolia, and it is likely the predominant taxon in PPR wetlands. Genetics-based studies are limited, and distributions are poorly known for the first-generation
Authors
Brian Tangen, Sheel Bansal, Joanna R. Freeland, Steven E. Travis, Jen D. Wasko, Terence P. McGonigle, L. Gordon Goldsborough, Keira Gow, Joy E. Marburger, Jacob Meier
FLUXNET-CH4: A global, multi-ecosystem database and analysis of methane seasonality from freshwater wetlands
Methane (CH4) emissions from natural landscapes constitute roughly half of global CH4 contributions to the atmosphere, yet large uncertainties remain in the absolute magnitude and the seasonality of emission quantities and drivers. Eddy covariance (EC) measurements of CH4 flux are ideal for constraining ecosystem-scale CH4 emissions due to quasi-continuous and high-temporal-resolution CH4 flux mea
Authors
Kyle B. Delwiche, Sarah Knox, Avni Malhotra, Etienne Fluet-Chouinard, Gavin McNicol, Sarah Feron, Zutao Ouyang, Dario Papale, Carlo Trotta, Eleonora Canfora, You-Wei Cheah, Danielle Christianson, Ma. Carmelita R. Alberto, Pavel Alekseychik, Mika Aurela, Dennis Baldocchi, Sheel Bansal, David P. Billesbach, Gil Bohrer, Rosvel Bracho, Nina Buchmann, David I. Campbell, Gerardo Celis, Weinan Chen, Jiquan Chen, Housen Chu, Higo J Dalmagro, Sigrid Dengel, Ankur R. Desai, Matteo Detto, Han Dolman, Elke Eichelmann, Eugenie S. Euskirchen, Daniela Famulari, Kathrin Fuchs, Mathias Goeckede, Sébastien Gogo, Mangaliso J Gondwe, Jordan P. Goodrich, Pia Gottschalk, Scott L. Graham, Martin Heimann, Manuel Helbig, Carole Helfter, Kyle S. Hemes, Takashi Hirano, David Hollinger, Lukas Hörtnagl, Hiroki Iwata, Adrien Jacotot, Joachim Jansen, Gerald Jurasinski, Minseok Kang, Kuno Kasak, John King, Janina Klatt, Franziska Koebsch, Ken Krauss, Derrick Y.F. Lai, Annalea Lohila, Ivan Mammarella, Luca B Marchesini, Giovanni Manca, Jaclyn H Matthes, Trofim Maximov, Lutz Merbold, Bhaskar Mitra, Timothy H. Morin, Eiko Nemitz, Mats B. Nilsson, Shuli Niu, Walter C. Oechel, Patricia Y. Oikawa, Keisuke Ono, Matthias Peichl, Olli Peltola, Michele L. Reba, Andrew D. Richardson, William Riley, Benjamin RK Runkle, Youngryel Ryu, Torsten Sachs, Ayaka Sakabe, Camilo Rey Sanchez, Edward A. Schuur, Karina VR Schäfer, Oliver Sonnentag, Jed P. Sparks, Ellen Stuart-Haëntjens, Cove Sturtevant, Ryan C. Sullivan, Daphne J. Szutu, Jonathan E Thom, Margaret S. Torn, Eeva-Stiina Tuittila, Jessica Turner, Masahito Ueyama, Alex C. Valach, Rodrigo Vargas, Andrej Varlagin, Alma Vazquez-Lule, Joseph G. Verfaillie, Timo Vesala, George L Vourlitis, Eric Ward, Christian Wille, Georg Wohlfahrt, Guan Xhuan Wong, Zhen Zhang, Donatella Zona, Lisamarie Windham-Myers, Benjamin Poulter, Robert B. Jackson
Limited shifts in the distribution of migratory bird breeding habitat density in response to future changes in climate
Grasslands, and the depressional wetlands that exist throughout them, are endangered ecosystems that face both climate and land-use change pressures. Tens of millions of dollars are invested annually to manage the existing fragments of these ecosystems to serve as critical breeding habitat for migratory birds. The North American Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) is a region that contains millions of de
Authors
Owen P. McKenna, David M. Mushet, Samuel R. Kucia, Elyssa Christina Mcculloch-Huseby