Survival and abundance of polar bears in Alaska's Beaufort Sea, 2001-2016.

The Arctic Ocean is undergoing rapid transformation toward a seasonally ice-free ecosystem. As ice-adapted apex predators, polar bears () are challenged to cope with ongoing habitat degradation and changes in their prey base driven by food-web response to climate warming. Knowledge of polar bear response to environmental change is necessary to understand ecosystem dynamics and inform conservation decisions.

Detection and Assessment of a Large and Potentially Tsunamigenic Periglacial Landslide in Barry Arm, Alaska.

The retreat of glaciers in response to global warming has the potential to trigger landslides in glaciated regions around the globe. Landslides that enter fjords or lakes can cause tsunamis, which endanger people and infrastructure far from the landslide itself. Here we document the ongoing movement of an unstable slope (total volume of 455 × 10 m) in Barry Arm, a fjord in Prince William Sound, Alaska.

Lousy grouse: Comparing evolutionary patterns in Alaska galliform lice to understand host evolution and host-parasite interactions.

Understanding both sides of host-parasite relationships can provide more complete insights into host and parasite biology in natural systems. For example, phylogenetic and population genetic comparisons between a group of hosts and their closely associated parasites can reveal patterns of host dispersal, interspecies interactions, and population structure that might not be evident from host data alone. These comparisons are also useful for understanding factors that drive host-parasite coevolutionary patterns (e.

Using multiple data types and integrated population models to improve our knowledge of apex predator population dynamics.

Current management of large carnivores is informed using a variety of parameters, methods, and metrics; however, these data are typically considered independently. Sharing information among data types based on the underlying ecological, and recognizing observation biases, can improve estimation of individual and global parameters. We present a general integrated population model (IPM), specifically designed for brown bears (), using three common data types for bear (.

Legacy or colonization? Posteruption establishment of peregrine falcons () on a volcanically active subarctic island.

How populations and communities reassemble following disturbances are affected by a number of factors, with the arrival order of founding populations often having a profound influence on later populations and community structure. Kasatochi Island is a small volcano located in the central Aleutian archipelago that erupted violently August 8, 2008, sterilizing the island of avian biodiversity. Prior to the eruption, Kasatochi was the center of abundance for breeding seabirds in the central Aleutian Islands and supported several breeding pairs of peregrine falcons ().

Identification of landscape features influencing gene flow: How useful are habitat selection models?

Understanding how dispersal patterns are influenced by landscape heterogeneity is critical for modeling species connectivity. Resource selection function (RSF) models are increasingly used in landscape genetics approaches. However, because the ecological factors that drive habitat selection may be different from those influencing dispersal and gene flow, it is important to consider explicit assumptions and spatial scales of measurement.