Circular-linear copulae for animal movement data.

Animal movement is often modelled in discrete time, formulated in terms of taken between successive locations at regular time intervals. Steps are characterized by the distance between successive locations () and changes in direction (). Animals commonly exhibit a mix of directed movements with large step lengths and turn angles near 0 when travelling between habitat patches and more wandering movements with small step lengths and uniform turn angles when foraging.

Meta-analysis: Congruence of genomic and phenotypic differentiation across diverse natural study systems.

Linking genotype to phenotype is a primary goal for understanding the genomic underpinnings of evolution. However, little work has explored whether patterns of linked genomic and phenotypic differentiation are congruent across natural study systems and traits. Here, we investigate such patterns with a meta-analysis of studies examining population-level differentiation at subsets of loci and traits putatively responding to divergent selection.

A rare 300 kilometer dispersal by an adult male white-tailed deer.

Despite the key roles that dispersal plays in individual animal fitness and meta-population gene flow, it remains one of the least understood behaviors in many species. In large mammalian herbivores, dispersals might span long distances and thereby influence landscape-level ecological processes, such as infectious disease spread. Here, we describe and analyze an exceptional long-distance dispersal by an adult white-tailed deer () in the central United States.

Freshwater insects CONUS: A database of freshwater insect occurrences and traits for the contiguous United States.

Motivation: Freshwater insects comprise 60% of freshwater animal diversity; they are widely used to assess water quality, and they provide prey for numerous freshwater and terrestrial taxa. Our knowledge of the distribution of freshwater insect diversity in the USA is incomplete because we lack comprehensive, standardized data on their distributions and functional traits at the scale of the contiguous United States (CONUS). We fill this knowledge gap by presenting .

Variability in the estimation of ungulate group sizes complicates ecological inference.

Foundational work has examined adaptive social behavior in animals in relation to the costs and benefits of group living. Within this context, a "group" of animals represents an organizational unit that is integral to the study of animal ecology and evolution.Definitions of animal group sizes are often subjective with considerable variability within and across species.

Patterns of livestock depredation and cost-effectiveness of fortified livestock enclosures in northern Tanzania.

Human-carnivore conflicts and retaliatory killings contribute to carnivore populations' declines around the world. Strategies to mitigate conflicts have been developed, but their efficacy is rarely assessed in a randomized case-control design. Further, the economic costs prevent the adoption and wide use of conflict mitigation strategies by pastoralists in rural Africa.

Beyond the snapshot: Landscape genetic analysis of time series data reveal responses of American black bears to landscape change.

Landscape genetic studies typically focus on the evolutionary processes that give rise to spatial patterns that are quantified at a single point in time. Although landscape change is widely recognized as a strong driver of microevolutionary processes, few landscape genetic studies have directly evaluated the change in spatial genetic structure (SGS) over time with concurrent changes in landscape pattern. We introduce a novel approach to analyze landscape genetic data through time.

Temporal constraints on the potential role of fry odors as cues of past reproductive success for spawning lake trout.

Deciding where to reproduce is a major challenge for most animals. Many select habitats based upon cues of successful reproduction by conspecifics, such as the presence of offspring from past reproductive events. For example, some fishes select spawning habitat following odors released by juveniles whose rearing habitat overlaps with spawning habitat.

Origins of the Greenland shark (): Impacts of ice-olation and introgression.

Herein, we use genetic data from 277 sleeper sharks to perform coalescent-based modeling to test the hypothesis of early Quaternary emergence of the Greenland shark () from ancestral sleeper sharks in the Canadian Arctic-Subarctic region. Our results show that morphologically cryptic somniosids and can be genetically distinguished using combined mitochondrial and nuclear DNA markers. Our data confirm the presence of genetically admixed individuals in the Canadian Arctic and sub-Arctic, and temperate Eastern Atlantic regions, suggesting introgressive hybridization upon secondary contact following the initial species divergence.

Creating multithemed ecological regions for macroscale ecology: Testing a flexible, repeatable, and accessible clustering method.

Understanding broad-scale ecological patterns and processes often involves accounting for regional-scale heterogeneity. A common way to do so is to include ecological regions in sampling schemes and empirical models. However, most existing ecological regions were developed for specific purposes, using a limited set of geospatial features and irreproducible methods.

Increases in the mean and variability of thermal regimes result in differential phenotypic responses among genotypes during early ontogenetic stages of lake sturgeon ().

Climate change is affecting thermal conditions worldwide. Understanding organismal responses associated with predicted changes are essential for predicting population persistence. Few studies have examined the effects of both increased mean and variance in temperature on organismal traits, particularly during early life stages.