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Abstract (from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/fwb.12290/abstract): Freshwater mussels (Unionidae) are a highly imperilled faunal group. One critical threat is thermal sensitivity, because global climate change and other anthropogenic activities contribute to increasing stream temperature and altered hydrologic flow that may be detrimental to freshwater mussels. We incorporated four benthic environmental components – temperature, sediment, water level (a surrogate for flow) and a vertical thermal gradient in the sediment column – in laboratory mesocosm experiments with juveniles of two species of freshwater mussels (Lampsilis abrupta and Lampsilis radiata) and tested their effects on survival, burrowing...
Abstract (from http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0173844): Urban habitats are characterized by impervious surfaces, which increase temperatures and reduce water availability to plants. The effects of these conditions on herbivorous insects are not well understood, but may provide insight into future conditions. Three primary hypotheses have been proposed to explain why multiple herbivorous arthropods are more abundant and damaging in cities, and support has been found for each. First, less complex vegetation may reduce biological control of pests. Second, plant stress can increase plant quality for pests. And third, urban warming can directly increase pest fitness and abundance. These...
Population changes and shifts in geographic range boundaries induced by climate change have been documented for many insect species. On the basis of such studies, ecological forecasting models predict that, in the absence of dispersal and resource barriers, many species will exhibit large shifts in abundance and geographic range in response to warming. However, species are composed of individual populations, which may be subject to different selection pressures and therefore may be differentially responsive to environmental change. Asystematic responses across populations and species to warming will alter ecological communities differently across space. Common garden experiments can provide a more mechanistic understanding...
Abstract (from http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/11-2296.1): Physiological tolerance of environmental conditions can influence species-level responses to climate change. Here, we used species-specific thermal tolerances to predict the community responses of ant species to experimental forest-floor warming at the northern and southern boundaries of temperate hardwood forests in eastern North America. We then compared the predictive ability of thermal tolerance vs. correlative species distribution models (SDMs) which are popular forecasting tools for modeling the effects of climate change. Thermal tolerances predicted the responses of 19 ant species to experimental climate warming at the southern site,...
Abstract (from ESA): Estimating population size and resource selection functions (RSFs) are common approaches in applied ecology for addressing wildlife conservation and management objectives. Traditionally such approaches have been undertaken separately with different sources of data. Spatial capture–recapture (SCR) provides a hierarchical framework for jointly estimating density and multi‐scale resource selection, and data integration techniques provide opportunities for improving inferences from SCR models. Despite the added benefits, there have been few applications of SCR‐RSF integration, potentially due to complexities of specifying and fitting such models. Here, we extend a previous integrated SCR‐RSF model...
Climate change is affecting species and ecosystems across the Northeast and Midwest U.S. Natural resource managers looking to maintain ecological function and species persistence have requested information to improve resource management in the face of climate change. Leveraging the research that has already been supported by the Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center and its partners, this project used the latest modeling techniques combined with robust field data to examine the impact of specific climate variables, land use change, and species interactions on the future distribution and abundance of species of conservation concern. An interdisciplinary team worked to understand the mechanisms that are driving...
Although scientists have identified many ways to reduce the negative effects of climate change on wildlife, this information is not readily available to natural resource managers. For successful wildlife adaptation to climate change, natural resource managers should have current, peerreviewed information to guide their decisions. We conducted a review of over 1300 publications for recommendations to manage wildlife in the face of climate change. We then summarized the findings as the wildlife adaptation menu, a tool to inform planning and decision-making in an accessible format.
Climate change is already affecting species in many ways. Because individual species respond to climate change differently, some will be adversely affected by climate change whereas others may benefit. Successfully managing species in a changing climate will require an understanding of which species will be most and least impacted by climate change. Although several approaches have been proposed for assessing the vulnerability of species to climate change, it is unclear whether these approaches are likely to produce similar results. In this study, we compared the relative vulnerabilities to climate change of 76 species of birds, mammals, amphibians, and trees based on three different approaches to assessing vulnerability....
Abstract (from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jawr.12179/abstract): Freshwater mussels (order Unionida) are a highly imperiled group of organisms that are at risk from rising stream temperatures ( T ). There is a need to understand the potential effects of land use (LU) and climate change (CC) on stream T and have a measure of uncertainty. We used available downscaled climate projections and LU change simulations to simulate the potential effects on average daily stream T from 2020 to 2060. Monte Carlo simulations were run, and a novel technique to analyze results was used to assess changes in hydrologic and stream T response. Simulations of daily mean T were used as input to our stochastic...
Abstract (from ZSL): The use of remote cameras is widespread in wildlife ecology, yet few examples exist of their utility for collecting environmental data. We used a novel camera trap method to evaluate the accuracy of gridded snow data in a mountainous region of the northeastern US. We were specifically interested in assessing (1) how snow depth observations from remote cameras compare with gridded climate data, (2) the sources of error associated with the gridded data and (3) the influence of spatial sampling on bias. We compared daily observations recorded by remote cameras with Snow Data Assimilation System (SNODAS ) gridded predictions using data from three winters (2014–2016). Snow depth observations were...
Abstract (from Nature Climate Change): In coming decades, warmer winters are likely to ease range constraints on many cold-limited forest insects1,2,3,4,5. Recent unprecedented expansion of the southern pine beetle (SPB, Dendroctonus frontalis) into New Jersey, New York and Connecticut in concert with warming annual temperature minima highlights the risk that this insect pest poses to the pine forests of the northern United States and Canada under continued climate change6. Here we present projections of northward expansion in SPB-suitable climates using a statistical bioclimatic range modelling approach and current-generation general circulation model output under Representative Concentration Pathways 4.5 and 8.5....
Abstract (from http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0102996): Trees are essential to urban habitats because they provide services that benefit the environment and improve human health. Unfortunately, urban trees often have more herbivorous insect pests than rural trees but the mechanisms and consequences of these infestations are not well documented. Here, we examine how temperature affects the abundance of a scale insect, Melanaspis tenebricosa (Comstock) (Hemiptera: Diaspididae), on one of the most commonly planted street trees in the eastern U.S. Next, we examine how both pest abundance and temperature are associated with water stress, growth, and condition of 26 urban street trees....
Abstract (from http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0059687): Cities profoundly alter biological communities, favoring some species over others, though the mechanisms that govern these changes are largely unknown. Herbivorous arthropod pests are often more abundant in urban than in rural areas, and urban outbreaks have been attributed to reduced control by predators and parasitoids and to increased susceptibility of stressed urban plants. These hypotheses, however, leave many outbreaks unexplained and fail to predict variation in pest abundance within cities. Here we show that the abundance of a common insect pest is positively related to temperature even when controlling for other habitat...
Abstract (from http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/13-1961.1): Trees provide ecosystem services that counter negative effects of urban habitats on human and environmental health. Unfortunately, herbivorous arthropod pests are often more abundant on urban than rural trees, reducing tree growth, survival, and ecosystem services. Previous research where vegetation complexity was reduced has attributed elevated urban pest abundance to decreased regulation by natural enemies. However, reducing vegetation complexity, particularly the density of overstory trees, also makes cities hotter than natural habitats. We ask how urban habitat characteristics influence an abiotic factor, temperature, and a biotic factor,...
Abstract (from http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0142031): Given the role of infectious disease in global pollinator decline, there is a need to understand factors that shape pathogen susceptibility and transmission in bees. Here we ask how urbanization affects the immune response and pathogen load of feral and managed colonies of honey bees ( Apis mellifera Linnaeus), the predominant economically important pollinator worldwide. Using quantitative real-time PCR, we measured expression of 4 immune genes and relative abundance of 10 honey bee pathogens. We also measured worker survival in a laboratory bioassay. We found that pathogen pressure on honey bees increased with urbanization...
Nesting strategies and use of important in-water habitats for far-ranging marine turtles can be determined using satellite telemetry. Because of a lack of information on habitat-use by marine turtles in the northern Gulf of Mexico, we used satellite transmitters in 2010 through 2012 to track movements of 39 adult female breeding loggerhead turtles (Caretta caretta) tagged on nesting beaches at three sites in Florida and Alabama. During the nesting season, recaptured turtles emerged to nest 1 to 5 times, with mean distance between emergences of 27.5 km; however, several turtles nested on beaches separated by ~250 km within a single season. Mean total distances traveled throughout inter-nesting periods for all turtles...
Use of existing marine protected areas (MPAs) by far-ranging marine turtles can be determined using satellite telemetry. Because of a lack of information on MPA use by marine turtles in the Gulf of Mexico, we used satellite transmitters in 2010 and 2011 to track movements of 11 adult female breeding green turtles (Chelonia mydas) tagged in Dry Tortugas National Park (DRTO), in the Gulf of Mexico, south Florida, USA. Throughout the study period, turtles emerged every 9–18 days to nest. During the intervals between nesting episodes (i.e., inter-nesting periods), the turtles consistently used a common core-area within the DRTO boundary, determined using individual 50% kernel-density estimates (KDEs). We mapped the...
Species loss can result in the subsequent loss of affiliate species. Though largely ignored to date, these coextinctions can pose threats to human health by altering the composition, quantity and distribution of zoonotic parasites. We simulated host extinctions from more than 1300 host–parasite associations for 29 North American carnivores to investigate changes in parasite composition and species richness. We also explored the geography of zoonotic parasite richness under three carnivore composition scenarios and examined corresponding levels of human exposure. We found that changes in parasite assemblages differed among parasite groups. Because viruses tend to be generalists, the proportion of parasites that are...