Ecosphere最新文献

{"title":"An integrated population model of a high-density coyote population in South Carolina, USA","authors":"Heather E. Gaya,&nbsp;Gino J. D'Angelo,&nbsp;Jordan L. Youngmann,&nbsp;Stacey L. Lance,&nbsp;John C. Kilgo","doi":"10.1002/ecs2.70339","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecs2.70339","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In the absence of red wolves (<i>Canis rufus</i>), coyote (<i>Canis latrans</i>) populations have expanded across the eastern United States. However, predator populations are particularly difficult to quantify, and it remains unclear if and when eastern coyotes will reach carrying capacity. To assess coyote population trends, we constructed an integrated population model (IPM) using coyote data recorded at the United States Department of Energy's Savannah River Site (SRS), a 78,000-ha National Environmental Research Park located in South Carolina, United States. Coyote densities averaged 50 coyotes/100 km² prior to lethal control in 2010 but dropped to 14 coyotes/100 km² in 2012 after three consecutive years of intensive lethal removal. By 2014, coyote densities stabilized around 44 coyotes/100 km². These results suggest that coyote populations can decline under sustained intensive control efforts but may rapidly increase when control efforts are ceased. Our results highlight the power of IPMs to estimate population parameters across long time scales when data collection is both spatially and temporally heterogenous. Lethal control efforts for coyotes are prohibitively expensive at a large scale and are unlikely to be a viable long-term management strategy. Managers should instead focus on setting game species hunting limits that account for coyote presence on the landscape.</p>","PeriodicalId":48930,"journal":{"name":"Ecosphere","volume":"16 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecs2.70339","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144606751","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Climate sensitivity and restoration trajectories: Insights from tidal marsh restoration in Elkhorn Slough, California","authors":"Kerstin Wasson,&nbsp;Monique C. Fountain,&nbsp;Margaret A. Zimmer,&nbsp;Karen E. Tanner,&nbsp;Seth A. Robinson,&nbsp;Wesley P. Moore,&nbsp;Zeanna Graves,&nbsp;Rikke Jeppesen,&nbsp;Susanne K. Fork,&nbsp;Bethany J. Lee,&nbsp;Michael Wilshire,&nbsp;John C. Haskins,&nbsp;Charlie Endris,&nbsp;Sean B. McCollum,&nbsp;Levi D. Robbins,&nbsp;Anna E. Braswell","doi":"10.1002/ecs2.70318","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecs2.70318","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Understanding restoration trajectories and their sensitivity to climate is critical for designing effective adaptation strategies for restoration projects. Tidal marsh restoration often involves initial bare earth conditions that may be stressful to colonizing plants, especially on high elevation marsh platforms built to be resilient to sea-level rise. Under these circumstances, stressors such as soil salinity may increase over time, but can be mitigated by strong rainfall. At Hester Marsh, a large tidal marsh restoration site in Elkhorn Slough, California, we evaluated passive restoration success, tracking colonization by plants whose seeds arrived naturally on tides, and active restoration success, monitoring greenhouse-grown transplants. Our investigation revealed nonlinear restoration trajectories with high climate sensitivity, at the scale of the entire landscape and of individual plants. We found strong effects of drought on marsh restoration success indicators. Plant colonization rate decreased dramatically over time in the first area to be completed, which experienced more drought conditions following construction. In contrast, it declined more slowly in the second area, which experienced more rainy years following construction. Both passive and active restoration showed strong differences across these areas and across dry and rainy years. Facilitation can sometimes improve conditions for later-arriving plants, but we found higher mortality of seedlings under existing vegetation than in bare areas. Thus, plant colonization may slow over time both due to increasing abiotic stress and through competition by early colonizers. Our findings lead to recommendations for climate adaptation strategies for tidal marsh restoration. Since we found that the first year following construction appeared to have the least stressful conditions, we recommend managers invest especially heavily in supporting plant colonization during this early window of opportunity. We also found plant size and species affected drought tolerance and recommend larger plant sizes and hardy species be incorporated into active tidal marsh restoration. Furthermore, we recommend planning for phased completion of restoration projects to generate a mosaic of areas with different trajectories and increase the probability that some areas will be completed during optimal climate conditions. We thus illustrate how an understanding of climate sensitivity of restoration trajectories can enhance restoration success.</p>","PeriodicalId":48930,"journal":{"name":"Ecosphere","volume":"16 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecs2.70318","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144606577","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Incorporating phylogenetic metrics of biodiversity to refine Lyme disease risk models","authors":"Shannon Summers,&nbsp;Grace Shaw,&nbsp;Andrea Swei","doi":"10.1002/ecs2.70338","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecs2.70338","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Biodiversity has been linked to reduced disease transmission through the dilution effect process. Traditional ecological measures of biological diversity, such as species richness, are most commonly used to test for the dilution effect. However, such metrics of species diversity do not consider the evolutionary relationship between species, which has important implications for host immune processes and disease transmission. Phylogenetic diversity incorporates the evolutionary relationships of a wildlife community. Host reservoir competency is partly determined by their capacity to mount effective immune responses, which may be phylogenetically determined. As a result, phylogenetic diversity may be a better metric to evaluate the relationship between host diversity and disease transmission, given that closely related species may have more similar pathogen competencies than distantly related ones. Few studies have examined the relationship between phylogenetic diversity and disease transmission, particularly in vector-borne transmission systems. This study seeks to quantify phylogenetic diversity in the western United States Lyme disease system, where the causal agent <i>Borrelia burgdorferi</i> is vectored by the western black-legged tick, <i>Ixodes pacificus.</i> We empirically measured mammalian diversity and tick data over seven years. We collected data on ticks, host community, and infection prevalence with <i>Borrelia burgdorferi</i> and constructed generalized linear mixed-effect models to evaluate the utility of phylogenetic diversity in predicting the prevalence of a tick-borne pathogen. We found that phylogenetic diversity metrics improved our disease prediction models. Predictions of the overall density and infection prevalence of ticks were improved by the addition of phylogenetic metrics, whereas the density of infected nymphs was solely predicted by a phylogenetic metric over traditional species diversity or richness. Our study found that phylogenetic diversity improves statistical predictions of the Lyme disease pathogen and entomological risk in the western United States and may be informative in other contexts and systems as well.</p>","PeriodicalId":48930,"journal":{"name":"Ecosphere","volume":"16 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecs2.70338","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144606580","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Differential responses of coolwater fishes to a whole-lake reduction of a warmwater thermal guild","authors":"Holly S. Embke,&nbsp;Stephen R. Carpenter,&nbsp;T. Douglas Beard Jr.,&nbsp;Giancarlo Coppola,&nbsp;Daniel A. Isermann,&nbsp;Eric J. Pedersen,&nbsp;Andrew L. Rypel,&nbsp;Christopher J. Sullivan,&nbsp;Tyler D. Tunney,&nbsp;M. Jake Vander Zanden","doi":"10.1002/ecs2.70297","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecs2.70297","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Climate change is transforming the ecology of lakes at a rapid pace, shifting some lakes toward warmwater-dominant habitats. As a result, warmwater fishes are increasingly becoming more prevalent in lakes where they already existed, altering the patterning and strength of species interactions. Understanding shifting species interactions (e.g., competition, predation), and the role of lake management in shaping these interactions, will be critical for lake stewardship in response to climate change. Here, we present results from an intensive 5-year experimental removal of ~285,000 warmwater fishes from a north-temperate lake. The goal of the experiment was to test whether warmwater fish reduction is effective for rewiring lake food webs to reverse undesirable conditions for coolwater species, leading to increased recruitment and abundance of coolwater fishes. Throughout the experiment, warmwater fishes were resilient to reductions, with biomass declines of 23% averaged across five species. Among coolwater fishes, the top predator walleye showed no biomass response, while yellow perch biomass increased by ~914%. Fish species biomass changes translated to food web shifts, including a yellow perch trophic position decline of 0.4, decreased zooplankton abundances, and increased zoobenthos abundances. Our results highlight differential species responses to a management action aimed at adapting to climate change. Despite similar thermal tolerances, two coolwater species responded differently to removal of warmwater fishes, highlighting the characteristics (e.g., life history strategies, adaptive capacity) that contribute to species resilience. Given the importance of biotic interactions, climate adaptation may need to go beyond a “one-size-fits-all” approach even when species have similar thermal tolerances.</p>","PeriodicalId":48930,"journal":{"name":"Ecosphere","volume":"16 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecs2.70297","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144598453","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Negative effects of forest harvest on coastal tailed frog (Ascaphus truei) emerge after a decade-long experiment","authors":"Aimee P. McIntyre,&nbsp;Reed Ojala-Barbour,&nbsp;Jay E. Jones,&nbsp;Andrew J. Kroll,&nbsp;Eric M. Lund,&nbsp;Timothy Quinn,&nbsp;William J. Ehinger,&nbsp;Stephanie M. Estrella,&nbsp;Dave E. Schuett-Hames,&nbsp;Marc P. Hayes","doi":"10.1002/ecs2.70281","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecs2.70281","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Perennial, low-order headwater streams provide critical ecosystem functions, including habitat for specialized aquatic species. Anthropogenic disturbances can degrade biological and physical conditions in headwater streams, with potentially corresponding negative effects on stream biodiversity. Headwater streams comprise most of the stream length in forested watersheds in the Pacific Northwest, the United States, including those that are globally important sources of wood biomass. To conserve stream biota, water quality, and related public resources, riparian buffers are retained as a management tool expected to ameliorate effects of anthropogenic disturbances, including timber harvests. From 2006 to 2015, we used a replicated Before-After Control-Impact (BACI) experiment to evaluate how coastal tailed frog (<i>Ascaphus truei</i>) density varied in three alternative riparian buffer configurations (continuous buffer, patchy buffer, and clearcut riparian area) and unharvested reference basins, in western Washington, the United States. We used count data to estimate tailed frog density for three years pre-harvest, the first two years post-harvest, and years seven and eight post-harvest. We compared relative change in density for each buffer configuration between pre- and post-harvest after controlling for temporal changes in the reference. We found no evidence of a decline in tailed frog density in the first two years post-harvest but saw evidence of substantial declines in larval and post-metamorphic coastal tailed frog densities in years seven and eight post-harvest. Specifically, we estimated a 65%, 93%, and 84% decline in average larval tailed frog density in basins with a continuous buffer, patchy buffer, and clearcut riparian area, respectively. We estimated 71% and 97% declines in post-metamorphic tailed frog densities in the continuous and patchy buffers. Because evidence of tailed frog declines became apparent only after eight years post-harvest, our results underscore the need for longer term studies to address lag effects in population responses to human land use and to understand how effectiveness of conservation practices can vary spatially and temporally.</p>","PeriodicalId":48930,"journal":{"name":"Ecosphere","volume":"16 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecs2.70281","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144598454","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Severity outweighs pyrodiversity in shaping avian and bat species distributions following an oak woodland megafire","authors":"Kendall L. Calhoun,&nbsp;Zachary L. Steel,&nbsp;Phoebe Parker-Shames,&nbsp;Haylee Oyler,&nbsp;Justin S. Brashares","doi":"10.1002/ecs2.70263","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecs2.70263","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Anthropogenic pressures have altered fire regimes across the western United States. These altered fire regimes, and the megafires they often produce, threaten ecologically and economically critical ecosystems and biodiversity across this region. Oak woodland savannas may be particularly sensitive to altered fire regimes, but there remains a significant gap in our understanding of how different characteristics of wildfire impact these ecosystems and the wildlife species that reside within them. In this study, we used an occupancy modeling framework to investigate how fire severity and pyrodiversity, the diversity of severity patches, impact the distributions of bird and bat species assemblages following a major wildfire in northern California. We used acoustic monitors deployed across the Hopland Research and Extension Center following the 2018 Mendocino Complex Fire and compared how patterns of fire severity and pyrodiversity influence habitat preferences across a diverse community of woodland bird and bat species. We found that fire enhances habitat use and increases occupancy for several species and species groups across both taxonomic groups. Specifically, low-to-moderate severity fire increased occupancy for several species and species groups. Pyrodiversity had smaller, negligible effects on species distributions relative to fire severity. Fires that reproduce the natural heterogeneity of oak woodland landscapes are likely key to sustaining high biodiversity across oak woodland ecosystems.</p>","PeriodicalId":48930,"journal":{"name":"Ecosphere","volume":"16 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecs2.70263","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144598577","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Floodplain land use gradients have a stronger effect on soil microbial enzyme activity than spatiotemporal variability","authors":"Rachael Harman-Denhoed,&nbsp;Mary-Cathrine Leewis,&nbsp;Hannah P. Lieberman,&nbsp;Grace McDougall-Vick,&nbsp;Cynthia M. Kallenbach","doi":"10.1002/ecs2.70334","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecs2.70334","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Climate change is leading to flood events with higher frequency and longer duration. Changes in seasonal flooding that affect water saturation of soils can impact soil microbial extracellular enzyme activity (EEA) that mediates nutrient and carbon cycling. Understanding controls on soil functional potential in floodplain ecosystems helps identify optimal land use practices in these biodiverse ecosystems often under threat from land use intensification. Here, we assess some of the abiotic controls on soil microbial EEA within a floodplain and determine how sensitive the relationship between EEA and land use is across spatial scales and time. We collected soils across land use gradients within the Lake Saint Pierre floodplain, a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve in Québec, and the largest freshwater floodplain in eastern Canada. Land uses included conventional and conservation agriculture, new and established managed perennial grasslands, and natural grasslands and forests. Within each land use, soils were sampled at three time periods, at three elevations representing different exposures to flood, and at four regions around the lake's shoreline to capture temporal and spatial variability. We found that EEAs declined with increasing land use intensity as expected, primarily associated with soil moisture and soil organic carbon. Notably, perennial agriculture practices had EEAs and nutrient and carbon concentrations falling between those under the annual agricultural and natural sites and could be an appropriate compromise to converting conventional agricultural practices back to natural areas. We also found that the gradient of decreasing EEA with increasing land use intensity was largely conserved across spatial scales and time. The exception for this conserved enzyme–land use relationship was in lower elevation soils, located close to the lakeshore that experience the highest flood frequency. In these locations, the land use characteristics that otherwise supported higher EEA seem to be overridden, as we did not observe any relationship between EEA and land use. Our results suggest that the influence of land use on supporting microbial nutrient and carbon cycling is largely stronger than the inherent spatial and temporal variation within a heterogeneous and biodiverse ecosystem like floodplains, highlighting the importance of land use management across scales.</p>","PeriodicalId":48930,"journal":{"name":"Ecosphere","volume":"16 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecs2.70334","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144589834","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Snow refugia: Managing temperate forest canopies to maintain winter conditions","authors":"Melissa A. Pastore,&nbsp;Sarah J. Nelson,&nbsp;Elizabeth A. Burakowski,&nbsp;Alexandra R. Contosta,&nbsp;Anthony W. D'Amato,&nbsp;Sarah Garlick,&nbsp;Edward Lindsey,&nbsp;David A. Lutz,&nbsp;Toni Lyn Morelli,&nbsp;Alexej P. K. Sirén,&nbsp;Grace A. Smith,&nbsp;Aaron Weiskittel","doi":"10.1002/ecs2.70302","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecs2.70302","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Climate change is reducing snowpack across temperate regions with negative consequences for human and natural systems. Because forest canopies create microclimates that preserve snowpack, managing forests to support snow refugia—defined here as areas that remain relatively buffered from contemporary climate change over time that sustain snow quality, quantity, and/or timing appropriate to the landscape—could reduce climate change impacts on snow cover, sustaining the benefits of snow. We review the current understanding of how forest canopies affect snow, finding that while closed-conifer forests and snow interactions have been extensively studied in western North America, there are knowledge gaps for deciduous and mixed forests with dormant season leaf loss. We propose that there is an optimal, intermediate zone along a gradient of dormant season canopy cover (DSCC; the proportion of the ground area covered by the canopy during the dormant season), where peak snowpack depth and the potential for snow refugia will be greatest because the canopy-mediated effects of snowpack sheltering (which can preserve snowpack) outweigh those of snowfall interception (which can limit snowpack). As an initial test of our hypothesis, we leveraged snowpack measurements in the northeastern United States spanning the DSCC gradient (low, &lt;25% DSCC; medium, 25%–50% DSCC; and high, &gt;50% DSCC), including from 2 sites in Old Town, Maine; 12 sites in Acadia National Park, Maine; and 30 sites in the northern White Mountains of New Hampshire. Medium DSCC forests (typically mature mixed coniferous–deciduous forests) exhibited the deepest peak snowpacks, likely due to reduced snowfall interception compared to high DSCC forests and reduced snowpack loss compared to low DSCC forests. Many snow accumulation or snowpack studies focus on the contrast between coniferous and open sites, but our results indicate a need for enhanced focus on mixed canopy sites that could serve as snow refugia. Measurements of snowpack depth and timing across a wider range of forest canopies would advance understanding of canopy–snow interactions, expand the monitoring of changing winters, and support management of forests and snow-dependent species in the face of climate change.</p>","PeriodicalId":48930,"journal":{"name":"Ecosphere","volume":"16 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecs2.70302","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144598576","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Effects of severe weather on shorebirds: Evidence of disrupted refueling and delayed departure on southbound migration","authors":"Sophia M. Fraser,&nbsp;Devin R. de Zwaan,&nbsp;Hilary A. R. Mann,&nbsp;Julie Paquet,&nbsp;Diana J. Hamilton","doi":"10.1002/ecs2.70329","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecs2.70329","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Severe weather events are more frequently impacting wildlife, especially in climate-sensitive ecosystems like coastal habitats. A particularly vulnerable stage for migratory species is juvenile movement between natal and non-breeding habitats. Globally, coastal habitats represent critical stopover or staging sites during postbreeding migration for many shorebird species. At these sites, individuals must accumulate necessary energy stores (i.e., fats and proteins) to fuel what are often long-distance, over-water flights to reach their final destination. Inexperienced juvenile shorebirds in unfamiliar habitats may be particularly susceptible to extreme weather events that alter habitat structure and resource availability, with potential implications for refueling efficiency and migration success. However, few studies have addressed the effects of extreme weather at staging sites, limiting our understanding of the capacity of birds to respond to or recover from acute disturbances. We used a before–after framework to investigate how Hurricane Fiona affected the staging behavior of juvenile semipalmated plovers (<i>Charadrius semipalmatus</i>) in Atlantic Canada during southbound migration. We combined morphometric analyses, automated radiotelemetry tracking, and invertebrate sampling to assess storm effects on relative fuel load, bivalve prey availability, and length of stay in the region. Birds captured poststorm lost an estimated 78% of their relative fuel load compared to prestorm birds, coinciding with an estimated 70% decline in bivalve availability. Individuals who experienced the storm approximately doubled their length of stay. Given that juvenile shorebirds undertake southbound migration later in the season than adults, we predict juveniles will be impacted disproportionately by late-season tropical storm patterns, with potentially substantial impacts on shorebird populations. We emphasize the need for a greater research focus on extreme weather during vulnerable life-history stages, like migration, for a broader understanding of how species will respond to increasingly intense storm events.</p>","PeriodicalId":48930,"journal":{"name":"Ecosphere","volume":"16 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-07-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecs2.70329","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144589943","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Ensembled evaluations of habitat suitability for prioritizing lesser prairie-chicken conservation","authors":"Morgan J. Solomon,&nbsp;Kent A. Fricke,&nbsp;Carter Kruse,&nbsp;Lance B. McNew","doi":"10.1002/ecs2.70321","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecs2.70321","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Populations of lesser prairie-chickens (<i>Tympanuchus pallidicinctus</i>, hereafter “prairie-chickens”) in the Mixed-Grass Prairie Ecoregion of the southern Great Plains have been projected to go extinct in the next 100 years unless targeted conservation efforts are implemented to increase the size and connectivity of subpopulations through either translocation or habitat restoration. To expand on current conservation efforts, we used ensemble approaches to identify potential habitat and assist managers in accurately prescribing management actions for prairie-chicken conservation. We developed lek-based relative habitat suitability models within the Mixed-Grass Prairie Ecoregion using both resource selection function and Random Forest classification trees and calculated ensembled predictions of relative habitat suitability across all models. Next, we conducted a least-cost path analysis to identify potential corridors connecting potentially suitable, unoccupied habitat to current subpopulations. Ensembled predictions identified 4575 km² of potential prairie-chicken habitat both occupied and unoccupied. We identified three contiguous areas of potentially suitable and unoccupied habitat (28–74 km²) that could potentially harbor a self-sustaining population. Ensembled predictions can be used to strategically implement restoration projects to enhance the quality and connectivity of habitat within and adjacent to the species' current distribution. Least-cost path analyses revealed a low degree of connectivity between areas of occupied and unoccupied habitat, highlighting the importance of implementing habitat improvement projects to increase connectivity for prairie-chicken persistence. Our results provide information that professionals may use to prioritize conservation delivery for prairie-chickens in the Mixed-Grass Prairie Ecoregion.</p>","PeriodicalId":48930,"journal":{"name":"Ecosphere","volume":"16 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-07-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecs2.70321","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144581924","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}