Q&A: Conserving rare species by focusing on the community

December 22, 2023 by Dana Kobilinsky

Conserving rare species is difficult when they’re too elusive for standard data analysis methods. Researchers wondered if by taking information from species we do know something about, we can help out those rarer individuals through a process of integrating data for multiple species simultaneously with “integrated community models”—a sort of “Robin Hood” approach. The team published a paper in the Journal of Animal Ecology highlighting a framework where something like this could be put into effect.

We caught up with TWS member Elise Zipkin, an associate professor in the department of integrative biology and the ecology, evolution, and behavior program at Michigan State University who led the study, to find out more about the approach. Her responses are edited for brevity and style.

How did you come up with this “Robin Hood” idea for conservation?

The idea is built out of two streams of research that have happened over the last 10 to 20 years.

The first idea is what we call hierarchical community modeling. In this approach, you have a single data source, or a single way that you’re collecting data. But by using these approaches to collect data on one species, you can naturally collect data on the whole community. For example, with bird point counts, you can hear all the breeding birds in the area. Another example is walking transects and turning over rocks to find salamanders but finding other species along the way. Instead of analyzing each of those species, from that single dataset, on its own—and if we did that, we ended up having to throw out a bunch of rare species and only get the common ones— we can model them all together. This allows us to understand what’s going on with rare and elusive species and ultimately, developing conservation approaches for the whole community.

At the same time, there’s an approach we call data integration, or integrated modeling. In this framework, you have a single target species for which you are able to collect multiple different types of data. This is often done with many types of migratory bird species. For example, maybe you have banding data on bird species collected over years at a breeding ground. Maybe you also have count data on adults or productivity data on nest success. The idea of integrated modeling is to combine all the different data sources into a single model, and that leads to like a more complete picture of what’s going on for that target species.

My lab thinks that both of these frameworks are really cool and opening up many doors in conservation. And then we thought, let’s see if we can do a data integration approach for multiple species simultaneously. That’s where integrated community models come in. If you can learn a lot more about each of the individual species, you can learn a lot more about the community as a whole.

What are some concrete examples?

With butterflies in the Midwest, we’re trying to understand, are they increasing? Decreasing? What’s going on? It turns out the Midwest has the highest density of butterfly surveys of basically anywhere in the world, so it’s a really good opportunity to apply the integrated community modeling framework. There are about six multi-species datasets collected in various parts of the Midwest, all with slightly different protocols. There’s been some work on individual species, including monarch butterflies, but not so much with the whole community beyond a limited spatial extent. We especially want to know something about the trends of rare species. And we want to know what’s going on broadly with butterflies across space. We’re currently working on taking all the data on hundreds of butterfly species, and we’re going to integrate that together into this framework. That’s going to allow us to see what’s going on for some of these rare species that we just don’t have that much data on. Our hope is to see which counties across the Midwest might be the best for targeted conservation actions.

We also have been working with different kinds of bird data, like eBird, NEON, the Breeding Bird Survey, and national park monitoring data. Each of these monitoring programs sample different parts of bird habitats. For example, because the BBS is all roadside surveys, what we see with birds on BBS transects might be different than what’s happening in natural, protected areas, where NEON data are collected. If we integrate these data, we can get a more nuanced look of how species are doing across space and time.

Researchers demonstrated their “Robin Hood” approach using data on butterflies in the Midwest. Credit: David Pavlik

What is the next step in getting this framework out to people to use for conservation and management?

We still need more research, as the integrated community modeling framework is pretty new. We need to understand when and where these methods work well and where they don’t. What are the strengths of this approach? What are the limitations? When will this approach be beneficial and when will it not be all that helpful? I think we’re still a bit away from broader implementation, but hopefully that would be down the road.

What is your vision for this framework to be used in the future?

What would be amazing is if we could develop more general purpose software. We could have practitioners and managers being able to use integrated community models in a way that they don’t need to do all the coding themselves.

Elise Zipkin. Credit: Michigan State University

There’s this focus on single species management, largely because of past policies and regulations. But we’re in this huge biodiversity crisis where we need to be thinking broader about how to protect communities of species. The integrated community modeling framework still allows us to pull out individual species that we’re really concerned about, but it also provides an overall picture of what’s going on with a community—how the community is responding to environmental variables, as a whole. This will allow us to start to understand what might be the best management and conservation actions for lots of species simultaneously.

Method for predicting climate change impacts on trees may be flawed

December 22, 2023 by The Wildlife Society

A common method scientists use to predict how tree species will respond to climate change may not be as accurate as they had thought. The method, called space-for-time substitution, assumes that tree species growing at the hotter end of their range can be an example of what will happen to populations at cooler locations under a warming climate. But researchers found that wasn’t true for ponderosa pine. They measured tree rings across the western U.S. dating as far back as 1900. Then, they compared the trees’ actual growth to what the model predicted would happen under climate change.  “We found that space-for-time substitution generates predictions that are wrong in terms of whether the response to warming is a positive or negative one,” said Margaret Evans, a coauthor on the paper and an associate professor in the University of Arizona Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research. “This method says that ponderosa pines should benefit from warming, but they actually suffer with warming. This is dangerously misleading.”

Read the study in Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences.

U.S. government sets out on first-ever assessment of nature

December 21, 2023 by David Frey

The U.S. government is embarking on a first-ever effort to gauge changes in nature in the country, amid a warming climate, growing urbanization and other factors that are transforming the natural world.

As they set out on this National Nature Assessment, officials are seeking insights from people who have witnessed these shifts happen on the ground. That includes experienced professionals with decades of datasets, young people with an eye on the future, Indigenous knowledge holders and others who have watched the natural world around them change.

“The reality is, we just don’t have a full picture of what’s happening with nature across the U.S.,” said Phil Levin, the assessment’s director, in an online presentation to NOAA Fisheries staff.

A former senior scientist at NOAA Fisheries, Levin is a professor of practice in environmental and forest sciences at the University of Washington and a lead scientist at The Nature Conservancy in Washington state. He is “on loan,” he told NOAA Fisheries, to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to steer the project.

“We don’t fully understand how nature is changing in the future for our children and our children’s children,” he said. “That’s really the genesis for the first-ever National Nature Assessment.”

The NNA is intended to be an interdisciplinary effort to understand the role that nature—in many forms— plays in people’s lives and how natural systems are changing. A final report is expected to be released in 2026, with dozens of authors and contributors lending their expertise to a variety of topics:

  • Assessment approach of NNA1
  • The Status, Trends and Future Projections of Nature in the U.S.
  • Status, Trends and Future Projections of Drivers of Change of Nature in the U.S.
  • Nature and Equity
  • Nature and Human Health and Wellbeing
  • Nature and Its Relationship to Cultural Heritage
  • Nature and Safety and Security
  • Nature and the Economy

The project is seeking experts in fields ranging from conservation biology to environmental social science to environmental justice. A November notice in the Federal Register asks for nominations by Jan. 4.

“That’s really the engine of this whole assessment—the many, many authors from agencies and academia and beyond,” Levin said.

The effort followed an executive order by the Biden administration commemorating Earth Day 2022, which called for an assessment of the state of nature in the U.S. It’s being led by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, best known for its National Climate Assessment, a periodic report to Congress on the effects of climate change in the country.

In addition to its scientific components, Levin intends to include success stories and accounts from people in their own words.

“It is an assessment that is not just a compilation of data and trends but really focused on what are the needs of people,” Levin said.

For more on the assessment, or to make a nomination, see the notice in the Federal Register.

No need for a red nose—reindeer vision peers into the dark

December 21, 2023 by The Wildlife Society

Reindeer don’t need Rudolph to find their way at night. Researchers found that the ungulates can see light in the ultraviolet spectrum, aiding their ability to find food in the dark Arctic winter.

“Reindeer are so cool, but many people think about them only at Christmas,” said Dartmouth professor Nathaniel Dominy, first author of a recent study in the journal i-Perception.

Reindeer—known as caribou (Rangifer tarandus) in the North American wild—subsist primarily on a lichen known as reindeer moss, or Cladonia rangiferina. To the human eye, the white lichen is nearly invisible against the snow. But reindeer moss and a few other lichen species they eat absorb UV light. Using spectral data from the lichen and light filters calibrated to mimic reindeer vision, researchers found that these lichen appear as dark patches against a bright background.

“Getting a visual approximation of how reindeer might see the world is something other studies haven’t done before,” Dominy said.

Read more from Dartmouth.

TWS 2023: Plants repel Asian elephants from crops

December 20, 2023 by Joshua Rapp Learn

Sri Lankan farmers seeking to keep elephants from raiding their crops are focusing on a unique trait in the animals: their dislike for orange trees.

The practice works so well that The Sri Lanka Wildlife Conservation Society conducted the so-called Project Orange Elephant, that’s goal is to deter elephants crop raids by planting the fruit around farming communities.

But these trees aren’t always easy to acquire or grow based on labor required, maintenance of the plants, space and other factors. As a result, Jorge Esparza, an undergraduate student in wildlife ecology and conservation at the University of Nevada, Reno, is seeking out other plants found in Sri Lanka that may help repel the animals.

“There are definitely plants that the elephants don’t like to eat that could serve as alternatives to the Project Orange Elephant,” Esparza said.

Jorge Esparza in front of his poster at The Wildlife Society’s 2023 Annual Conference in Louisville. Credit: Joshua Rapp Learn

Conflict between humans and Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) is an issue in Sri Lanka, which has one of the densest populations of these large mammals in the world. Killing elephants is banned in the South Asian country, but it still occurs as farmers perceive the animals as threats to their crops and livelihood—elephants can destroy entire crops in a single night.

Previous research and practice have revealed that planting orange trees around crops or farming communities keeps elephants away. They don’t like the taste of oranges—the Bibile Sweet (Citrus sinensis) variety is the one often used for this purpose—and the smell of the fruit can mask the aroma of the food they do like, such as rice, bananas, jackfruit and other popular crops in the area, Esparza said. Plus, the fruit can provide an additional source of revenue to farmers.

Students from the University of Nevada, Reno, and volunteers and staff from the Sri Lanka Wildlife Conservation Society interviewed locals about recent crop raids. Credit: Seth Freedman-Peel

Alternate repellent

In ongoing research presented on a poster at The Wildlife Society’s 2023 Annual Conference in Louisville,  Esparza showed how he is searching for other plants that could substitute orange trees when the latter aren’t suitable. 

Esparza conducted a least cost path analysis around Wasgamuwa National Park. This essentially meant predicting where elephants were most likely to move. He compared these areas to the locations of confirmed elephant sightings to predict areas with a higher probability of conflict.

An elephant in the kind of tall grass ecosystems that they often favor. Credit: Seth Freedman-Peel

The students and researchers created 50 by 50-meter plots, some in forests and others in more open areas. Esparza and his colleagues also interviewed locals to learn more about the impacts of human-elephant conflict on farmers. This included finding out more about which plants elephants didn’t like, such as coffee and sesame.Esparza surveyed the plants in these plots, paying attention to the presence of any of the plants they didn’t like.

Comparing elephant movements to places they avoided revealed more plants the animals may dislike—species like African mahogany and Dimorphocalyx glabellus, a small tree native to the country.

Esparza said that this knowledge can improve the options farmers have for repelling elephants from farmland. Learning more about these ecological relationships may offer ways to decrease human-elephant conflict in a country where it is a pressing issue.

Watch: Wolves released in Colorado

December 20, 2023 by The Wildlife Society

Colorado Parks and Wildlife released five gray wolves into the state as part of a voter-mandated reintroduction effort. The wolves (Canis lupus), taken from Oregon, were released on a remote mountainside on public land in Grand County on Dec. 18. Voters narrowly approved the reintroduction process in November 2022, although ranchers and farmer opposed the project due to fear of wolf attacks on livestock. Colorado Parks and Wildlife plans to release 30 to 50 wolves in the next five years. The canids have historically roamed the state but were extirpated by the late 1800s. The reintroduction effort follows incidents of natural wolf colonization in the state.

Read more from the Associated Press.

Watch a video documenting the monumental release below:

Wildlife Vocalizations: Alina Fisher

December 19, 2023 by The Wildlife Society

Wildlife Vocalizations is a collection of short personal perspectives from people in the field of wildlife sciences.

My undergrad thesis supervisor once told me that, “the best way to be a scientist was to act like a scientist.”

Fisher collars a Columbian black-tailed deer (Odocoileus hemionus columbianus) as part of a nonlethal urban deer management research program in the municipality of Oak Bay, within greater Victoria, British Columbia. Credit: Alina C. Fisher

It’s much like “fake it ’til you make it,” but it helped me to keep going while battling imposter syndrome and adversity.

We all face adversity, but some tenacity can get you a long way. A lot of us second-guess our abilities and our professional worth—especially women—and the best way to overcome it is to acknowledge that those fears are unfounded and to just keep going.

Fisher during a mountaineering fieldwork training trip in 2019 among fellow researchers with the Mountain Legacy Project. This was taken at 5040 hut in Alberni-Claoquot, but the main research takes place along the eastern slopes of the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Credit: Alina C. Fisher

Don’t let disappointments or surprises derail you. Keep doing your science, enjoy learning (it’s a life-long process), and celebrate your successes.

Learn more about Wildlife Vocalizations, and read other contributions.

Submit your story for Wildlife Vocalizations or nominate your peers and colleagues to encourage them to share their story.

For questions, please contact tws@wildlife.org.

Eastern U.S. sees more wildfires than ever

December 19, 2023 by The Wildlife Society

Scientists say an upward trend in wildfires throughout the eastern U.S emphasizes the importance of protective management. The new analysis includes data spanning more than three decades from the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity Database. The findings suggest an increased wildfire risk in the eastern and southern portions of the Eastern Temperate Forest, an ecoregion that stretches from the Atlantic Coast to eastern Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Iowa and Minnesota. “We don’t have the expansive wildfire problem that the western U.S. does yet, so this is also an opportunity to get ahead of the problem and prepare for shifting wildfire patterns before we start seeing the frequent destructive fires that we’re seeing in the West,” said Victoria Donovan, lead author of the study and an assistant professor of forest management at the UF/IFAS West Florida Research and Education Center. The team said the fire increase is due to human ignition and that climate change may be a factor.

Read more in Geophysical Research Letters.

TWS 2023: Birds tap into abundantly available salamander food source 

December 18, 2023 by Dana Kobilinsky

When Endi Piovesana set out to study avian predation on red-backed salamanders, the jury was still out on whether it even happened or not.

“The conclusions that I was reading up on were kind of inconsistent,” said Piovesana, an undergraduate student at Michigan State University. One article said birds weren’t major salamander predators. Another said the opposite. “It was pretty variable across the board.”

Piovesana, with help from his mentor Alexa Warwick, a professor at Michigan State University, hoped to set the record straight on this common salamander, which occupies woodlands throughout much of eastern North America. He presented his research on a poster at The Wildlife Society’s annual conference in Louisville this year.

Instead of deploying one method in his research, he and his colleagues had a three-pronged approach. In the fall and spring of 2021 and the fall of 2022, Piovesana set out camera traps with clay model salamanders at the Rose Lake State Wildlife Area near the University of Michigan campus. “The idea was to try and capture what would have been naturally occurring interactions,” he said.

He placed the cameras in shrubby areas that birds would be attracted to. The models also attracted birds.

When reviewing the footage, Piovesana captured live video of an American robin trying—unsuccessfully—to capture and eat a live red-backed salamander (Plethodon cinereus). “It was very cool, because you can actually see the salamander drop its tail, and it’s able to get away,” he said.

Piovesana set up containers—some with red-backed salamanders, some with mealworms and some that were empty—to see what various bird species preferred to eat. Credit: Endi Piovesana

Piovesana noted predation occurred mostly from American robins (Turdus migratorius), blue jays (Cyanocitta cristata) and common grackles (Quiscalus quiscula). They all exhibited similar foraging behavior, including overturning leaf litter and woody debris. “It seems pretty conducive to finding salamanders,” he said.

Still, capturing these interactions was pretty rare. Piovesana was more likely to find footage of opossums or raccoons going after the clay models, which he originally baited with peanuts.      

To add more depth to his study, Piovesana conducted a genetic analysis of bird fecal samples to look for evidence of salamanders. He didn’t find any, but he thinks that may be because he collected the samples in the fall, when birds are more likely to be eating fatty foods to fuel up for migration in the winter. “In the spring, they’re looking for more protein so they can feed their young,” he said. He hopes to conduct the genetic research again next spring.

Piovesana presented is research at the annual TWS conference in Louisville. Credit: Courtesy Endi Piovesana

The third part of his research involved setting up a more controlled experiment inside an aviary. After capturing birds at a banding station, he placed them inside the aviary with plastic containers that held either red-backed salamanders, mealworms or were empty, and he hid in a hunting blind to watch. He also set up video cameras to see which prey the birds were choosing, but he hasn’t yet reviewed the footage.

Initially, he has seen some interest by the birds in the salamanders, though. “I definitely noticed a few strikes from the American robins,” he said.    

Piovesana said the findings are important, especially as North American birds continue to decline.

“Red-backed salamanders are just such an insanely abundant source of biomass in the forest where many of these birds that are in decline reside,” he said. “Understanding their needs is key to conserving them, and I think trying to identify potential relationships here would be pretty significant in advancing those conservation efforts.”

Where do birds go when they need a rest?

December 18, 2023 by The Wildlife Society

As migrating birds travel back and forth between summer breeding grounds and winter rangers, places along the route provide important opportunities to rest and refuel. But where the birds choose to stopover is often a mystery. In a recent study, researchers used weather radar imagery to maps these stopovers. They found over 9,000 square miles of land across the eastern United States served as stopover hotspots.

These hot spots mostly consisted deciduous forests and isolated pockets of forest. Most of these lands were unprotected, researchers found, although protected landscapes had a higher density of stopover areas. And the spots birds choose in the fall are often different than the ones they choose in the spring.

“This information is incredibly important,” said Princeton professor David Wilcove, a co-author of the paper published in Current BIology. “Without it, we wouldn’t know which sites to protect to ensure safe passage for the birds.”

Read more from the Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment.