Indiana Studies Urban Fawns

Posted on June 5, 2013 by MadelineBodin

collared fawn Indiana From an Indiana Department of Natural Resources press release:

DNR Division of Fish & Wildlife biologists are partnering with Ball State University biologists to determine how white-tailed deer fawns move in urban areas compared to rural areas.

The study kicked off this spring with more than 30 fawns being collared with lightweight radio transmitters to track their movement. The project will last two years and the data collected will be used to help with statewide management of white-tailed deer. The data will also provide insight into the differences in the lives of urban and rural fawns.

Read the entire press release here.

Photo: Collared fawn, courtesy of Indiana DNR

Mountain Lion Caught Fishing

Posted on June 3, 2013 by MadelineBodin

The Missoulian reports that Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks bear manager Jamie Jonkel caught something unexpected on the trail camera he set up to monitor a trout spawning stream on a tributary of the Blackfoot River. He expected to get videos of black bears catching rainbow trout. And he did.

But he also got a video of a mountain lion pouncing on a trout and then another shot of the lion with the trout in its mouth.

See the article for speculation about how rare or common this behavior is in mountain lions, as well as speculation for its cause. For the record, the article says that the area is good mountain lion habitat with plenty of game.

Read the article in the Missoulian, here.

Tracking a Bird Eye Disease

Posted on May 30, 2013 by MadelineBodin

House Finch with eye disease House finch eye disease, which was first struck in the 1990s, unexpectedly became more virulent over time, says a paper published this week by PLoS Biology. It was a less virulent strain, however, that spread west across the country. But once it became established in California, it became more virulent.

“For the disease to disperse westward, a sick bird has to fly a little farther, and survive for longer, to pass on the infection. That will select for strains that make the birds less sick,” said Dana Hawley of Virginia Tech, the lead author of the study in a Cornell Lab of Ornithology press release.

By 1998 the House Finch population in the eastern United States had dropped by half—a loss of an estimated 40 million birds, the release says. The disease does not kill birds directly, but it makes them easy targets for predators.

Read the Cornell press release here.
Read the PLoS biology paper here.

Photo: Male house finch with eye disease, by David Smith. Used courtesy Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

It’s Not The Heat, It’s the Water Regime

Posted on May 29, 2013 by MadelineBodin

black-bellied_salamander_cressler_high_res Today is the second day in a US Geological Survey amphibian two-fer. If you like your wildlife moist and federally researched, you’ve come to the right place.

Scientists have long suspected that climate change is an important factor in amphibian declines, a US Geological Survey press release notes, and resource managers are asking whether conservation measures might help species persist or adapt in a changing climate. Three recent U.S. Geological Survey studies offer some insight into the issue.

The studies were conducted by researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative, or ARMI.

One study found that it’s not the heat, it’s the precipitation that will drive amphibian’s response to climate change. That is, the alternating droughts and deluges that are predicted to worsen as climate change increases, will hurt amphibian populations as they struggle to adapt to ever-changing water levels. Read that paper in the journal Biology.

Another study confirmed that drought hurts populations of mole salamanders, at least over the short term. The study was important because the mole salamanders are similar to the federally threatened flatwoods salamander, and the finding implies that climate change will be yet another stressor to the threatened species. Read the paper in the journal Wetlands.

The third study showed U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wetlands Reserve Program is effective in increasing the species richness of frogs and toads on farms in the program. Creating permanent, or at least long-lasting, water sources seems to be the primary reason. Learn more in the paper in the journal Restoration Ecology.

You can read a more detailed summary of these three studies in the USGS press release, here.

Photo: Black-bellied salamander (Desmognathus quadramaculatus) was found in the Citico Creek Wilderness, Cherokee National Forest, Tennessee. Not sure what it has to do with these studies, but it’s cute. Photo by Alan Cressler, courtesy USGS.

USGS Calculates How Fast Amphibians Are Falling

Posted on May 28, 2013 by MadelineBodin

There have been studies that have calculated the likelihood of extinction for various amphibian species, but the first study to calculate how fast amphibian populations are declining was recently published in PLoS ONE.

The study found that amphibians disappeared from their habitats at a rate of 3.7% per year from 2002 to 2011. Species that are red-listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) disappeared at an average of 11.6% annually.

“Even though these declines seem small on the surface, they are not,” said US Geological Survey ecologist Michael Adams, the lead author of the study in a press release. “Small numbers build up to dramatic declines with time. We knew there was a big problem with amphibians, but these numbers are both surprising and of significant concern.”

Read the PLoS ONE article, here. (Open access.)
Read the USGS press release on the paper, here.
Read a Washington Post article that is mostly about the rate of amphibian decline, here.

Photo: A green tree frog (Hyla cinerea) sits on the lip of a pitcher plant in a bog in Alabama. Photo by Alan Cressler, used courtesy USGS.

Wyoming Studies Mountain Goats

Posted on May 24, 2013 by MadelineBodin

mtn goat wyoming The Wyoming Game and Fish Department recently captured four mountain goats in the western part of the state as part of an on-going study into the animals’ travel between Idaho and Wyoming, says an Associate Press article in the Billings Gazette.

An article in the Caspar Star-Tribune adds that, “the goats were tranquilized while biologists collected nasal and tonsil swabs, blood and fecal samples.”

Mountain goats are not native to Wyoming, the articles state. But apparently, they are native to adjoining Idaho. After being reintroduced to Idaho, some of the mountain goats wandered over to Wyoming.

Photo: Mountain goat, courtesy of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department

Non-native Lice Impact Cal. Deer Population

Posted on May 23, 2013 by MadelineBodin

hair loss syndrome CDFW California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) researchers have captured and collected hair and blood samples from more than 600 deer and elk in an effort to understand “deer hair-loss syndrome,” says a CDFW news release.

A non-native louse appears to be a key factor in the syndrome, which also sometimes includes internal parasites. Deer with the syndrome are skinny, and the fawns don’t survive. A report from Fox 40 in Sacramento notes that the syndrome has been known in Oregon for years.

“Some of us speculate that the louse-infested deer spend so much time grooming they become easy targets of predation by coyotes or mountain lions,” said CDFW senior wildlife biologist, Greg Gerstenberg in the release.

The researchers have counted and identified lice on the captured deer, are following them through radio collars, and have treated some for lice. They hope to have answers soon.

Read the brief CDFW news release, here.
The Fox 40 report is here.

Mule deer are in decline throughout the West, and California is no exception. This article from 2010 in the San Francisco Chronicle discusses the decline.

Photo: Deer with hair-loss syndrome, courtesy of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife

Invasive Ladybug Packs A Secret Weapon

Posted on May 22, 2013 by MadelineBodin

The multicolored Asian ladybug, also known as the harlequin lady beetle or ladybird (or just Harmonia axyridis), carries a fungal parasite in its blood that doesn’t seem to cause it much harm, but is deadly to the native ladybugs of Europe and North America.

That’s why the Asian ladybug has been such a ferocious competitor to native ladybugs, a paper in last week’s issue of the journal Science found. Scientists have long known that where Asian ladybugs are introduced, native ladybugs disappear, but they weren’t sure why. It seemed that the invasive species was out-competing the natives somehow. The new study explains why.

A fungus in the same genus infects honeybees.

Read the article in Science, here. (Subscription or fee required to see the entire article.)
Read the AAAS ScienceShot, here.Here’s the Guardian article, which I ignored at first because it focuses on European ladybugs. (The North American natives are in the same boat.)
Here’s the Los Angeles Times article on the same paper.

Fly away home, indeed.

More Black Bears in Oklahoma

Posted on May 21, 2013 by MadelineBodin

FWC black bear cub About 200 people watched as the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation released a young black bear. The bear had been found and tranquilized in a university campus neighborhood and was released in a wildlife area, reported Tulsa’s News On Six.

The big turnout is a sign that black bears are not that common in Oklahoma. Black bears were reintroduced to Arkansas in the 1960s, the article says, and their populations there have grown so much that they are now moving into eastern Oklahoma.

The report also mentions a black bear survey being conducted by Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit at Oklahoma State University. Twenty bears have been trapped during the three years of the study, the report says.

View or read the News On Six report here.

Photo: Bear cub, courtesy of the Florida Wildlife Commission

NY Snapping Turtle Law Generates Buzz

Posted on May 20, 2013 by MadelineBodin

Snapping_Turtle All over the Internet, on Facebook, on blogs, on turtle forums and tortoise forums there are requests for New Yorkers to protest a proposed State Assembly bill that would allow trapping of snapping turtles.

I could not find any information on why these members of the New York State Assembly want to re-introduce the trapping of snapping turtles now. But I did find this informative article in the Baltimore City Paper explaining that trapping snapping turtles was banned in the state in 2009.

Ten years ago I researched an article on the global turtle crisis. Scientists and conservationists said that China’s increasing wealth had just about wiped out wild turtles not only in China, but throughout Southeast Asia. The Chinese were importing turtles from Africa and Australia. At the time scientists feared the crisis would reach the United States.

In the US, the southern states were the first to see turtle exports to China. Is the New York State bill an attempt to cash in on the trade? Current New York State law allows hunters to shoot the turtles with guns or arrow, but not live trap them. The Chinese market demands live turtles.

Snapping turtles are common in New York State and elsewhere. What made the global turtle crisis a crisis, however, is that the that the turtles started out common everywhere, but were quickly wiped out.

Read the Assembly bill here.
Read the Baltimore City Paper article here.

Photo: Snapping turtle by Chelsi Hornbaker, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

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