Lesser prairie-chicken () populations have declined by >90% since the 1800s. These declines have concerned both biologists and private conservation groups and led to a petition to list the lesser prairie-chicken as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Most of the land in the current range of the lesser prairie-chicken is privately owned, and declines have been primarily attributed to anthropogenic factors. Conversion of native rangeland to cropland and excessive grazing have been implicated as leading causes in the species' decline. Periodic drought probably has exacerbated these problems. Little research on habitat requirements was conducted prior to 1970. Despite recent advances in the knowledge of lesser prairie-chicken ecology, no comprehensive guidelines for management of the species have been published. In these guidelines, we provide a synopsis of our current knowledge of lesser prairie-chicken habitat requirements and suggest management strategies to monitor, maintain, and enhance lesser prairie-chicken populations.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.2193/0091-7648(2004)32[69:GFMLPP]2.0.CO;2 | DOI Listing |
PNAS Nexus
August 2024
Department of Forestry and Natural Resources, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA.
Population genomics can reveal cryptic biological diversity that may impact fitness while simultaneously serving to delineate relevant conservation units. Here, we leverage the power of whole-genome resequencing for conservation by studying 433 individual lesser prairie-chicken (; LEPC, a federally endangered species of conservation concern in the United States) and greater prairie-chicken (; GRPC, a legally huntable species throughout much of its range). The genomic diversity of two formally recognized distinct population segments (DPSs) of LEPCs is similar, but they are genetically distinct.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWildlife telemetry data may be used to answer a diverse range of questions relevant to wildlife ecology and management. One challenge to modeling telemetry data is that animal movement often varies greatly in pattern over time, and current continuous-time modeling approaches to handle such nonstationarity require bespoke and often complex models that may pose barriers to practitioner implementation. We demonstrate a novel application of treed Gaussian process (TGP) modeling, a Bayesian machine learning approach that automatically captures the nonstationarity and abrupt transitions present in animal movement.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPLoS One
May 2024
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Fort Collins, Colorado, United States of America.
Lesser prairie-chicken (Tympanuchus pallidicinctus) populations of in the Sand Sagebrush Prairie Ecoregion of southwest Kansas and southeast Colorado, USA, have declined sharply since the mid-1980s. Decreased quality and availability of habitat are believed to be the main drivers of declines. Our objective was to reconstruct broad-scale change in the ecoregion since 1985 as a potential factor in population declines.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFConservation translocations are frequently inhibited by extensive dispersal after release, which can expose animals to dispersal-related mortality or Allee effects due to a lack of nearby conspecifics. However, translocation-induced dispersals also provide opportunities to study how animals move across a novel landscape, and how their movements are influenced by landscape configuration and anthropogenic features. Translocation among populations is considered a potential conservation strategy for lesser prairie-chickens ().
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMol Phylogenet Evol
December 2023
George Miksch Sutton Avian Research Center, Bartlesville, OK 74005, USA.
Rapid divergence and subsequent reoccurring patterns of gene flow can complicate our ability to discern phylogenetic relationships among closely related species. To what degree such patterns may differ across the genome can provide an opportunity to extrapolate better how life history constraints may influence species boundaries. By exploring differences between autosomal and Z (or X) chromosomal-derived phylogenetic patterns, we can better identify factors that may limit introgression despite patterns of incomplete lineage sorting among closely related taxa.
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