Accounting for Scavenger Behaviors When Predicting Disease Spread at Carcasses

SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

Episodic Gregariousness Leads to Level‐Dependent Core Habitats: A Case Study in Eastern Copperheads (<i>Agkistrodon contortrix</i>)

Ecology and Evolution · 2025-01-01 · 1 citations

ABSTRACT Characterizing the complex relationships between animals and their habitats is essential for effective wildlife conservation and management. Wildlife–habitat selection is influenced by multiple life‐history requirements, which act over varying spatial and temporal scales, and result in dispersion patterns that can differ across ecological levels. For example, sites that attract intense communal use (e.g., hibernacula and communal basking sites) are often a subset of the habitats required by individuals for survival. Despite the conservation importance of both individually and communally significant habitats, snake habitat models rarely incorporate information about both individual and population‐level activity. We used 4 years of radiotelemetry data from eastern copperheads ( Agkistrodon contortrix ) to evaluate the presence of multilevel spatial habitat responses and whether they revealed conservation‐relevant information. We related individual and population space use intensity to underlying habitat covariates to determine whether predictors of copperhead spatial activity were level‐dependent, and whether individual core habitats differed by sex and reproductive state. Copperheads' episodic gregariousness resulted in spatial and environmental separation between individual and communal core habitats. Population‐level use was greatest in rocky, forested habitats associated with winter brumation and spring basking, whereas individual‐level use was greatest in open habitats with woody debris associated with foraging and reproductive behaviors. Male core habitats were open and thickly vegetated while those of females were moderately forested, with gravid female core habitats containing ample woody debris. Our findings demonstrate that multilevel spatial patterns carry conservation‐relevant information about snake habitat relationships. We suspect that behaviors leading to multilevel spatial patterns exist in many wildlife species whose individual spatial activities overlap around shared resources.

Detection of Spotted Lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula) by Bats: A qPCR Approach to Forest Pest Surveillance

Forests · 2025-02-28 · 2 citations

Invasive insect pests pose a significant threat to forest ecosystems. Effective pest management relies on detecting these pests, which can be challenging when populations are sparse, newly introduced, or not easily observable. The spotted lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula White), a recent invader to North America, has caused extensive damage across the eastern United States since its introduction in 2014. Conventional monitoring methods, such as traps or visual inspections, are limited in their spatial coverage and may not reliably attract or capture target species. In this study, we explored the potential of bat guano as an additional tool for invasive insect detection. We collected guano samples from five bat species across three forested sites in New Jersey, USA, between 2018 and 2022 and used species-specific quantitative PCR (qPCR) to detect spotted lanternfly DNA. Spotted lanternfly DNA was detected in guano from two bat species: big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus) and eastern red bats (Lasiurus borealis). Detection probability was strongly influenced by spotted lanternfly phenology, with higher detection rates occurring during the adult life stage. The detection of spotted lanternfly DNA in bat guano demonstrates the feasibility of using guano analysis as a complementary tool for insect pest surveillance. Integrating guano-based monitoring with traditional methods could enhance insect pest detection efforts across diverse forested and agricultural landscapes.

Essentials of Research Integrity for Ecologists

SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

Essentials of research integrity for ecologists

Estuarine Coastal and Shelf Science · 2025-12-29

Vehicles kill birds on sandy beaches: The global evidence

The Science of The Total Environment · 2025-03-30 · 2 citations

1. Ocean beaches provide essential habitats for a diversity of birds to forage, breed, and roost. Beaches can also be prime sites for motorized recreation where off-road vehicles (ORVs) interact with avifauna - this creates a complex threat landscape in the human-wildlife domain, translating into a wicked conservation challenge. 2. Because effective vehicle management aimed at mitigating the adverse impacts of ORVs on animals is, ideally, evidence-based, here we synthesize the global data on vehicle-bird conflicts on sandy beaches. 3. Our meta-analysis demonstrates that deleterious impacts of ORVs on beach birds are geographically widespread, impacting a diversity of species in multiple ways, representing serious harm to individuals, populations, and assemblages. 4. Significant declines in the abundance and diversity of birds stressed by ORVs are common. Fitness is compromised at all stages of the breeding cycle: a) there are fewer breeding pairs, nests and successful breeding attempts on shores open to ORVs; b) compromised incubating behaviour exposes eggs and chicks to heat, cold and predators; c) nests and eggs are directly crushed by vehicles; d) fewer chicks hatch, and e) the number of young fledged diminishes. ORVs also flush birds (‘escape on the wing’), curtail critical foraging time, cause physiological stress, and displace individuals to less favourable habitats. 5. The strength of the evidence for serious ecological harm unambiguously attributed to off-road vehicles emphasizes the need to permanently reduce the spatial reach of ORVs, creating adequately-sized ‘safe zones’ for coastal avifauna in a variety of seascape and human use settings. • Recreational off-road vehicles (ORVs) conflict with birds on sandy beaches. • We provide a global meta-analysis of ORV impacts on birds on ocean beaches. • There is substantial evidence that ORVs cause serious harm to avifauna. • Declines in abundance, diversity, and fitness are common in birds stressed by ORVs. • The prime management tool is permanent and sizeable ‘safe zones’ free of vehicles.

Low‐Coverage Whole‐Genome Analysis of Population Structure, Bottlenecks, and Selection in Indiana Bats Before and After White‐Nose Syndrome

Molecular Ecology · 2025-11-10 · 1 citations

Conservation successes for the endangered Indiana bat (Myotis sodalis) in the early 2000s were largely reversed by white-nose syndrome (WNS), a novel fungal disease that emerged in North America in 2006. Impacts have been variable among Indiana bat colonies leading to uncertainty regarding the full impact of WNS on this species. However, many colonies maintain negative population growth, threatening long-term viability. Adaptive evolution could allow populations to persist despite disease, as has happened for other species; however, the evolutionary potential of Indiana bats remains unclear. Here, we perform low-coverage whole-genome sequencing to identify population structure, test for potential population bottlenecks, and scan for signatures of selection by comparing bat tissue samples from four states before and after WNS emergence. We found evidence of high connectivity across the Indiana bat range, but reduced gene flow to the colony from Northern New York. There was little evidence of a population bottleneck relating to WNS, suggesting disease-driven mortality has not significantly altered demographics in this species. Similarly, we found little evidence of parallel selection occurring across the sample set. However, 3 genes contained outlier loci within every state, and several SNPs showed signs of parallel selection within subsets of locations. Finally, although non-parallel allele frequency changes within a location are difficult to directly link to WNS, we found that groups of genes containing outlier loci in individual states were associated with immune, metabolic, and neural functions with a potential relationship to WNS pathophysiology.

Coarse‐Scale Online Data Reveal Habitat Similarities but Weak Cross‐Taxa Congruence Between Insectivorous Bats and Birds in the Eastern United States

Diversity and Distributions · 2025-09-01

ABSTRACT Aim Prudent use of cross‐taxa congruence can aid biodiversity conservation by quantitatively evaluating possible indicator taxa. However, highly variable results among spatial extents and study regions present challenges to its practical application. We aim to evaluate insectivorous birds as possible surrogate taxa for bats. Bats are cryptic, understudied, and imperilled animals that may greatly benefit from conservation actions targeted at more easily observable surrogate taxa, should strong congruence exist. Location Temperate and northern forests of the eastern United States. Methods We used 6 years of data from eBird and the North American Bat Monitoring Program (NABat) to explore cross‐taxa congruence and broad‐scale habitat associations between insectivorous birds and bats in eastern North America. We used spatial linear models to evaluate cross‐taxa congruence and community responses to coarse‐scale habitat features. Results Our results indicated weak positive congruence for species richness of bats and birds. We revealed similar strong community responses to forest structure. Birds were more responsive to the distribution of forested habitat in the landscape and forest type. Additional principal component analysis revealed high overlap between cavity‐nesting birds and snag‐roosting bats. Main Conclusions Our results discourage the general use of birds as surrogates for bats in eastern and northern temperate forests. Our eclectically sourced dataset yielded habitat associations that align well with known trends in bat and bird biodiversity, which suggest potential utility of mass‐aggregated online resources for answering broad‐scale ecological questions.

Selection in Indiana bats exposed to white-nose syndrome differs with geography

2025-02-20

Conservation successes for the endangered Indiana bat (Myotis sodalis) in the early 2000s were largely reversed by white-nose syndrome (WNS), a novel fungal disease that emerged in North America in 2006. Impacts have been variable among Indiana bat colonies, but many maintain negative population growth, leading to concern for their long-term viability. Adaptive evolution (i.e., evolutionary rescue) could allow populations to persist despite disease, as has happened for other species; however, the evolutionary potential of Indiana bats remains unclear. Here, we perform a genome-wide scan to test for signatures of selection by comparing bat tissue samples from five geographic regions before and after WNS emergence. We tested for three types of selection across geographic scales: 1) selection targeting different genetic loci in different geographic regions; 2) parallel selection targeting similar loci range-wide; and 3) parallel selection affecting subsets of geographic regions. Our results suggest widespread evidence for selection in Indiana bats that varies by geographic region, implying differences in standing genetic variation or context-dependent WNS responses. We provide evidence for stabilizing and directional selection acting within individual geographic regions and in parallel within subsets of geographic regions. However, we detected no evidence of parallel selection acting on the same genomic coordinates across all geographic regions. Taken together, our results suggest selection in Indiana bats is driven in part by environmental factors that vary by geographic region or hibernaculum in addition to WNS.

Transcriptomic evidence of cytokine storm and sepsis in little brown bats exposed to white-nose syndrome

Conservation Physiology · 2025-01-01 · 1 citations

on exposed epidermal tissue of bats creates an immune reaction that disrupts natural hibernation physiology and leads to premature expenditure of energy reserves and often death. Past work has highlighted the similarities between WNS and immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome, but other conditions that have not been considered yet may also be relevant. We performed a transcriptomic analysis of wing tissue from naïve and exposed bats to further investigate the implications of observed differential gene expression patterns. For this analysis, we collected wing biopsy samples from 41 individuals prior to WNS emergence and 58 individuals 2-5 years after WNS emergence. We generated poly-A enriched tag-Seq libraries to compare gene expression between these groups. We then linked our findings and those of past studies to other disease systems to build hypotheses regarding mechanisms of WNS pathophysiology. We found an overrepresentation of functions related to programmed cell death and cytokine activity among upregulated genes. Importantly, we also identified upregulation of three S100 damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs) in exposed populations. Taken together, our findings and those of past studies suggest that infected bats experience a feedback loop of cell death among immune cells, the release of DAMPs and the stimulation of cytokine release that may act to maintain pathological immune activity. This feedback loop likely relates to cytokine storms in individuals with severe infection and possibly deteriorates into sepsis over time. Given the pathophysiology of sepsis, multiple organ dysfunction potentially contributes to the physiological disruption associated with WNS.