SNAPSHOT USA 2021: A third coordinated national camera trap survey of the United States.

SNAPSHOT USA is a multicontributor, long-term camera trap survey designed to survey mammals across the United States. Participants are recruited through community networks and directly through a website application (https://www.snapshot-usa.

Chromosome-level assembly of the gray fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) confirms the basal loss of PRDM9 in Canidae.

Reference genome assemblies have been created from multiple lineages within the Canidae family; however, despite its phylogenetic relevance as a basal genus within the clade, there is currently no reference genome for the gray fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus). Here, we present a chromosome-level assembly for the gray fox (U. cinereoargenteus), which represents the most contiguous, non-domestic canid reference genome available to date, with 90% of the genome contained in just 34 scaffolds and a contig N50 and scaffold N50 of 59.

Coupled social and ecological change drove the historical extinction of the California grizzly bear ().

Large carnivores (order Carnivora) are among the world's most threatened mammals due to a confluence of ecological and social forces that have unfolded over centuries. Combining specimens from natural history collections with documents from archival records, we reconstructed the factors surrounding the extinction of the California grizzly bear (), a once-abundant brown bear subspecies last seen in 1924. Historical documents portrayed California grizzlies as massive hypercarnivores that endangered public safety.

Uncovering the Holocene roots of contemporary disease-scapes: bringing archaeology into One Health.

The accelerating pace of emerging zoonotic diseases in the twenty-first century has motivated cross-disciplinary collaboration on One Health approaches, combining microbiology, veterinary and environmental sciences, and epidemiology for outbreak prevention and mitigation. Such outbreaks are often caused by spillovers attributed to human activities that encroach on wildlife habitats and ecosystems, such as land use change, industrialized food production, urbanization and animal trade. While the origin of anthropogenic effects on animal ecology and biogeography can be traced to the Late Pleistocene, the archaeological record-a long-term archive of human-animal-environmental interactions-has largely been untapped in these One Health approaches, thus limiting our understanding of these dynamics over time.

Historical DNA from a rediscovered nineteenth-century paratype reveals genetic continuity of a Bahamian hutia () population.

Past and ongoing human activities have shaped the geographical ranges and diversity of species. New genomic techniques applied to degraded samples, such as those from natural history collections, can uncover the complex evolutionary consequences of human pressures and generate baselines for interpreting magnitudes of species loss or persistence relevant to conservation. Here we integrate mitogenomic data with historical records from a recently rediscovered Bahamian hutia (; (FMP Z02816)) specimen at the Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium (Vermont, USA) to determine when and where the specimen was collected and to place it in a phylogenetic context with specimens that both predate (palaeontological) and postdate (archaeological) human arrival in The Bahamas.

Dietary niche breadth influences the effects of urbanization on the gut microbiota of sympatric rodents.

Cities are among the most extreme forms of anthropogenic ecosystem modification, and urbanization processes exert profound effects on animal populations through multiple ecological pathways. Increased access to human-associated food items may alter species' foraging behavior and diet, in turn modifying the normal microbial community of the gastrointestinal tract (GIT), ultimately impacting their health. It is crucial we understand the role of dietary niche breadth and the resulting shift in the gut microbiota as urban animals navigate novel dietary resources.

Colonial Legacies Influence Biodiversity Lessons: How Past Trade Routes and Power Dynamics Shape Present-Day Scientific Research and Professional Opportunities for Caribbean Scientists.

AbstractScientists recognize the Caribbean archipelago as a biodiversity hotspot and employ it for their research as a natural laboratory. Yet they do not always appreciate that these ecosystems are in fact palimpsests shaped by multiple human cultures over millennia. Although post-European anthropogenic impacts are well documented, human influx into the region began about 5,000 years prior.

Stable isotopes reveal seasonal dietary responses to agroforestry in a venomous mammal, the Hispaniolan solenodon ().

While trends in tropical deforestation are alarming, conservation biologists are increasingly recognizing the potential for species survival in human-modified landscapes. Identifying the factors underlying such persistence, however, requires basic ecological knowledge of a species' resource use. Here, we generate such data to guide conservation of an understudied venomous mammal, the Hispaniolan solenodon (), that occupies a mosaic landscape of agriculture and forest fragments in the western Dominican Republic.

Biogeographic problem-solving reveals the Late Pleistocene translocation of a short-faced bear to the California Channel Islands.

An accurate understanding of biodiversity of the past is critical for contextualizing biodiversity patterns and trends in the present. Emerging techniques are refining our ability to decipher otherwise cryptic human-mediated species translocations across the Quaternary, yet these techniques are often used in isolation, rather than part of an interdisciplinary hypothesis-testing toolkit, limiting their scope and application. Here we illustrate the use of such an integrative approach and report the occurrence of North America's largest terrestrial mammalian carnivore, the short-faced bear, Arctodus simus, from Daisy Cave (CA-SMI-261), an important early human occupation site on the California Channel Islands.

Collagen Sequence Analysis Reveals Evolutionary History of Extinct West Indies Nesophontes (Island-Shrews).

Ancient biomolecule analyses are proving increasingly useful in the study of evolutionary patterns, including extinct organisms. Proteomic sequencing techniques complement genomic approaches, having the potential to examine lineages further back in time than achievable using ancient DNA, given the less stringent preservation requirements. In this study, we demonstrate the ability to use collagen sequence analyses via proteomics to assist species delimitation as a foundation for informing evolutionary patterns.

7000 years of turnover: historical contingency and human niche construction shape the Caribbean's Anthropocene biota.

The human-mediated movement of species across biogeographic boundaries-whether intentional or accidental-is dramatically reshaping the modern world. Yet humans have been reshaping ecosystems and translocating species for millennia, and acknowledging the deeper roots of these phenomena is important for contextualizing present-day biodiversity loss, ecosystem functioning and management needs. Here, we present the first database of terrestrial vertebrate species introductions spanning the entire anthropogenic history of a system: the Caribbean.

Analogies for a No-Analog World: Tackling Uncertainties in Reintroduction Planning.

Species reintroductions involve considerable uncertainty, especially in highly altered landscapes. Historical, geographic, and taxonomic analogies can help reduce this uncertainty by enabling conservationists to better assess habitat suitability in proposed reintroduction sites. We illustrate this approach using the example of the California grizzly, an iconic species proposed for reintroduction.

Exceptionally preserved asphaltic coprolites expand the spatiotemporal range of a North American paleoecological proxy.

As fossilized feces, coprolites represent direct evidence of animal behavior captured in the fossil record. They encapsulate past ecological interactions between a consumer and its prey and, when they contain plant material, can also guide paleoenvironmental reconstructions. Here we describe the first coprolites from the lagerstätte Rancho La Brea (RLB) in Los Angeles, California, which also represent the first confirmed coprolites from an asphaltic ("tar pit") context globally.

Micro Methods for Megafauna: Novel Approaches to Late Quaternary Extinctions and Their Contributions to Faunal Conservation in the Anthropocene.

Drivers of Late Quaternary megafaunal extinctions are relevant to modern conservation policy in a world of growing human population density, climate change, and faunal decline. Traditional debates tend toward global solutions, blaming either dramatic climate change or dispersals of Homo sapiens to new regions. Inherent limitations to archaeological and paleontological data sets often require reliance on scant, poorly resolved lines of evidence.

Merging paleobiology with conservation biology to guide the future of terrestrial ecosystems.

Conservation of species and ecosystems is increasingly difficult because anthropogenic impacts are pervasive and accelerating. Under this rapid global change, maximizing conservation success requires a paradigm shift from maintaining ecosystems in idealized past states toward facilitating their adaptive and functional capacities, even as species ebb and flow individually. Developing effective strategies under this new paradigm will require deeper understanding of the long-term dynamics that govern ecosystem persistence and reconciliation of conflicts among approaches to conserving historical versus novel ecosystems.

Post-invasion demography of prehistoric humans in South America.

As the last habitable continent colonized by humans, the site of multiple domestication hotspots, and the location of the largest Pleistocene megafaunal extinction, South America is central to human prehistory. Yet remarkably little is known about human population dynamics during colonization, subsequent expansions, and domestication. Here we reconstruct the spatiotemporal patterns of human population growth in South America using a newly aggregated database of 1,147 archaeological sites and 5,464 calibrated radiocarbon dates spanning fourteen thousand to two thousand years ago (ka).

Genetics reveal the origin and timing of a cryptic insular introduction of muskrats in North America.

The muskrat, Ondatra zibethicus, is a semiaquatic rodent native to North America that has become a highly successful invader across Europe, Asia, and South America. It can inflict ecological and economic damage on wetland systems outside of its native range. Anecdotal evidence suggests that, in the early 1900s, a population of muskrats was introduced to the Isles of Shoals archipelago, located within the Gulf of Maine, for the purposes of fur harvest.