Publications by authors named "Elizabeth Flaherty"

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.

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Wildlife must adapt to human presence to survive in the Anthropocene, so it is critical to understand species responses to humans in different contexts. We used camera trapping as a lens to view mammal responses to changes in human activity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Across 163 species sampled in 102 projects around the world, changes in the amount and timing of animal activity varied widely.

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Managing wildlife populations in the face of global change requires regular data on the abundance and distribution of wild animals, but acquiring these over appropriate spatial scales in a sustainable way has proven challenging. Here we present the data from Snapshot USA 2020, a second annual national mammal survey of the USA. This project involved 152 scientists setting camera traps in a standardized protocol at 1485 locations across 103 arrays in 43 states for a total of 52,710 trap-nights of survey effort.

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Resource acquisition and allocation impacts individual fitness. Using pellet analysis of breeding adults and stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen of down feathers of Kelp Gull (Larus dominicanus) nestlings, we evaluated the relationship between urban refuse (beef and chicken) and natural food (fish) consumption of individual females during the pre-incubation period, with fecundity and young nesting's success in the Río de la Plata Estuary in Uruguay. Assimilated urban refuse positively correlated with egg weight and negatively with young nestling's success.

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In this study, we applied multiple reaction monitoring (MRM)-profiling to explore the relative ion intensity of lipid classes in plasma samples from sea turtles in order to profile lipids relevant to sea turtle physiology and investigate how dynamic ocean environments affect these profiles. We collected plasma samples from foraging green (Chelonia mydas, n = 28) and hawksbill (Eretmochelys imbricata, n = 16) turtles live captured in North Pacific Costa Rica in 2017. From these samples, we identified 623 MRMs belonging to 10 lipid classes (sphingomyelin, phosphatidylcholine, free fatty acid, cholesteryl ester, phosphatidylserine, phosphatidylinositol, phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine, ceramide, and triacylglyceride) and one metabolite group (acyl-carnitine) present in sea turtle plasma.

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Connections, collaborations, and community are key to the success of individual scientists as well as transformative scientific advances. Intentionally building these components into science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education can better prepare future generations of researchers. Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) are a new, fast-growing teaching practice in STEM that expand opportunities for undergraduate students to gain research skills.

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With the accelerating pace of global change, it is imperative that we obtain rapid inventories of the status and distribution of wildlife for ecological inferences and conservation planning. To address this challenge, we launched the SNAPSHOT USA project, a collaborative survey of terrestrial wildlife populations using camera traps across the United States. For our first annual survey, we compiled data across all 50 states during a 14-week period (17 August-24 November of 2019).

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Successful conservation and management of protected wildlife populations require reliable population abundance data. Traditional capture-mark-recapture methods can be costly, time-consuming, and invasive. Photographic mark-recapture (PMR) is a cost-effective, minimally invasive way to study population dynamics in species with distinct markings or color patterns.

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School nurses across Massachusetts and the nation rose to the challenges presented by the pandemic of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). One of the many ways in which school nurses responded to the pandemic was to work in collaboration with their Local Boards of Health in a variety of capacities. The essential functions of a school nurse uniquely prepare them for the roles of case investigators and contact tracing monitors as a means to ensure population health.

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New World flying squirrels, Glaucomys spp., are nocturnal arboreal sciurid rodents that have been previously surveyed for coccidial parasites. To date, 4 species of Eimeria have been reported from 2 species of Glaucomys.

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Rationale: Differences in stable isotope composition between an animal and its diet are quantified by experimentally derived diet-tissue discrimination factors. Appropriate discrimination factors between consumers and prey are essential for interpreting stable isotope patterns in ecological studies. While available for many taxa, these values are rarely estimated for organisms within the carrion food web.

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The isotopic niche of consumers represents biologically relevant information on resource and habitat use. Several tools have been developed to quantify niche size and overlap. Nonetheless, methods adapted by spatial ecologists to quantify animal home ranges can be modified for use in stable isotope ecology when data are not normally distributed in bivariate space.

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Article Synopsis
  • Anthropogenic food subsidies, like refuse, significantly influence animal population dynamics, with Kelp Gulls heavily relying on these food sources for chick development.
  • Through diet analysis and stable isotopes of nestling blood, the study revealed that refuse was increasingly provided to Kelp Gull chicks during their growth period, leading to varied isotopic signatures in their tissues.
  • The findings underscore the importance of addressing waste management practices in Uruguay, as refuse is affecting coastal ecosystems in ways not thoroughly examined by environmental scientists.
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For decades, ecologists have debated the importance of biotic interactions (e.g., competition) and abiotic factors in regulating populations.

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Comparatively little is known about hantavirus prevalence within rodent populations from the Midwestern US, where two species of native mice, the prairie deer mouse ( Peromyscus maniculatus bairdii) and the white-footed mouse ( Peromyscus leucopus noveboracensis), are dominant members of rodent communities. We sampled both species in central Indiana and tested individuals for presence of hantavirus antibodies to determine whether seroprevalence (percent of individuals with antibodies reactive to Sin Nombre virus antigen) differed between species, or among different habitat types within fragmented agro-ecosystems. Prevalence of hantavirus antibodies varied significantly between species, with seroprevalence in prairie deer mice (21.

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The relationship between canopy structure and light transmission to the forest floor is of particular interest for studying the effects of succession, timber harvest, and silviculture prescriptions on understory plants and trees. Indirect measurements of leaf area index (LAI) estimated using gap fraction analysis with linear and hemispheric sensors have been commonly used to assess radiation interception by the canopy, although the two methods often yield inconsistent results. We compared simultaneously obtained measurements of LAI from a linear ceptometer and digital hemispheric photography in 21 forest stands on Prince of Wales Island, Alaska.

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Nurses are trained to think in terms of the nursing process, which encompasses the five steps of assessment, diagnosis, outcomes/planning, implementation, and evaluation. Cities and towns have developed emergency plans based on the "all-hazards" approach. School district plans are also formulated based on the all-hazards approach of hazard mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery, which mirrors the nursing process.

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Gliding allows mammals to exploit canopy habitats of old-growth forests possibly as a means to save energy. To assess costs of quadrupedal locomotion for a gliding arboreal mammal, we used open-flow respirometry and a variable-speed treadmill to measure oxygen consumption and to calculate cost of transport, excess exercise oxygen consumption, and excess post-exercise oxygen consumption for nine northern flying squirrels (Glaucomys sabrinus) and four fox squirrels (Sciurus niger). Our results indicate that oxygen consumption during exercise by flying squirrels was 1.

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A consensus guidelines model was developed for managing erectile dysfunction (ED) by urology nurses and other health care clinicians. The model emphasizes identification of ED in all males older than 40, education and counseling as keys to intervention, and inclusion of partners whenever possible. These guidelines are intended to provide a comprehensive care model for ED patients and their partners, which would be optimally cost effective and clinically relevant.

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Endothelins have been postulated to be important regulators of penile erectile function. The endothelin-A receptor antagonist BMS-193884 was evaluated as a treatment for mild-to-moderate erectile dysfunction in an animal model and in human volunteer subjects. In laboratory studies, organ bath preparations of rabbit and human penile cavernosal tissue strips were incubated with BMS-193884 and exposed to increasing concentrations of endothelins.

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