Uncertainty and precaution in hunting wolves twice in a year: Reanalysis of Treves and Louchouarn.

Management of wolves is controversial in many jurisdictions where wolves live, which underscores the importance of rigor, transparency, and reproducibility when evaluating outcomes of management actions. Treves and Louchouarn 2022 (hereafter TL) predicted outcomes for various fall 2021 hunting scenarios following Wisconsin's judicially mandated hunting and trapping season in spring 2021, and concluded that even a zero harvest scenario could result in the wolf population declining below the population goal of 350 wolves specified in the 1999 Wisconsin wolf management plan. TL further concluded that with a fall harvest of > 16 wolves there was a "better than average possibility" that the wolf population size would decline below that 350-wolf threshold.

Effects of lethal management on gray wolf pack persistence and reproduction in Wisconsin, USA.

Direct human-caused mortality accounts for about half of all large mammal mortality in North America. For social species like gray wolves (Canis lupus), the death of pack members can disrupt pack structure and cause pack dissolution, and mortality of breeding adults or wolves during reproduction and pup-rearing can decrease pup recruitment. We estimated minimum and maximum probability of wolf pack persistence in Wisconsin, USA, during biological years (15 April-14 April) 2011-2019 and evaluated the influence of pack size and legal harvest mortality on pack persistence during 2012-2014.

Habitat selection of resident and non-resident gray wolves: implications for habitat connectivity.

Habitat selection studies facilitate assessing and predicting species distributions and habitat connectivity, but habitat selection can vary temporally and among individuals, which is often ignored. We used GPS telemetry data from 96 Gray wolves (Canis lupus) in the western Great Lakes region of the USA to assess differences in habitat selection while wolves exhibited resident (territorial) or non-resident (dispersing or floating) movements and discuss implications for habitat connectivity. We used a step-selection function (SSF) to assess habitat selection by wolves exhibiting resident or non-resident movements, and modeled circuit connectivity throughout the western Great Lakes region.

Phages are unrecognized players in the ecology of the oral pathogen Porphyromonas gingivalis.

Background: Porphyromonas gingivalis (hereafter "Pg") is an oral pathogen that has been hypothesized to act as a keystone driver of inflammation and periodontal disease. Although Pg is most readily recovered from individuals with actively progressing periodontal disease, healthy individuals and those with stable non-progressing disease are also colonized by Pg. Insights into the factors shaping the striking strain-level variation in Pg, and its variable associations with disease, are needed to achieve a more mechanistic understanding of periodontal disease and its progression.