Simulated treatment effects on bird communities inform landscape-scale dry conifer forest management.

Human land use and climate change have increased forest density and wildfire risk in dry conifer forests of western North America, threatening various ecosystem services, including habitat for wildlife. Government policy supports active management to restore historical structure and ecological function. Information on potential contributions of restoration to wildlife habitat can allow assessment of tradeoffs with other ecological benefits when prioritizing treatments.

Development and evaluation of habitat suitability models for nesting white-headed woodpecker (Dryobates albolarvatus) in burned forest.

Salvage logging in burned forests can negatively affect habitat for white-headed woodpeckers (Dryobates albolarvatus), a species of conservation concern, but also meets socioeconomic demands for timber and human safety. Habitat suitability index (HSI) models can inform forest management activities to help meet habitat conservation objectives. Informing post-fire forest management, however, involves model application at new locations as wildfires occur, requiring evaluation of predictive performance across locations.

Dry conifer forest restoration benefits Colorado Front Range avian communities.

Fire suppression has increased stand density and risk of severe, stand-replacing wildfire in lower elevation dry conifer forests of western North America, threatening ecological function. The U.S.

Simulations inform design of regional occupancy-based monitoring for a sparsely distributed, territorial species.

Sparsely distributed species attract conservation concern, but insufficient information on population trends challenges conservation and funding prioritization. Occupancy-based monitoring is attractive for these species, but appropriate sampling design and inference depend on particulars of the study system. We employed spatially explicit simulations to identify minimum levels of sampling effort for a regional occupancy monitoring study design, using white-headed woodpeckers (), a sparsely distributed, territorial species threatened by habitat decline and degradation, as a case study.

Ensemble modeling to predict habitat suitability for a large-scale disturbance specialist.

To conserve habitat for disturbance specialist species, ecologists must identify where individuals will likely settle in newly disturbed areas. Habitat suitability models can predict which sites at new disturbances will most likely attract specialists. Without validation data from newly disturbed areas, however, the best approach for maximizing predictive accuracy can be unclear (Northwestern U.

Effects of parents and Brown-headed Cowbirds (Molothrus ater) on nest predation risk for a songbird.

Nest predation limits avian fitness, so ornithologists study nest predation, but they often only document patterns of predation rates without substantively investigating underlying mechanisms. Parental behavior and predator ecology are two fundamental drivers of predation rates and patterns, but the role of parents is less certain, particularly for songbirds. Previous work reproduced microhabitat-predation patterns experienced by Yellow Warblers (Setophaga petechia) in the Mono Lake basin at experimental nests without parents, suggesting that these patterns were driven by predator ecology rather than predator interactions with parents.

How avian nest site selection responds to predation risk: testing an 'adaptive peak hypothesis'.

1. Nest predation limits avian fitness, so birds should favour nest sites that minimize predation risk. Nevertheless, preferred nest microhabitat features are often uncorrelated with apparent variation in predation rates.