691 results match your criteria: "Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences Texas A&M University College Station Texas.[Affiliation]"
bioRxiv
October 2024
School of Biology and Environmental Science, University College Dublin, Belfield Campus, Dublin 4, Ireland.
Amphibians represent a diverse group of tetrapods, marked by deep divergence times between their three systematic orders and families. Studying amphibian biology through the genomics lens increases our understanding of the features of this animal class and that of other terrestrial vertebrates. The need for amphibian genomic resources is more urgent than ever due to the increasing threats to this group.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Environ Manage
August 2024
Ecoresolve, San Francisco, CA, USA; BlueForests, San Francisco, CA, USA; United Nations Volunteering Program via Morobe Development Foundation, Lae, 00411, Papua New Guinea; Department of Civil Engineering, College of Engineering, American University of Sharjah (AUS), PO Box, 26666, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates; Department of Geography, University of California - Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA. Electronic address:
Mangroves in Southeast Asia provide numerous supporting, provisioning, regulating, and cultural services that are crucial to the environment and local livelihoods since they support biodiversity conservation and climate change resilience. However, Southeast Asia mangroves face deforestation threats from the expansion of commercial aquaculture, agriculture, and urban development, along with climate change-related natural processes. Ecotourism has gained prominence as a financial incentive tool to support mangrove conservation and restoration.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMol Ecol
August 2024
Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA.
Tick vectors and tick-borne disease are increasingly impacting human populations globally. An important challenge is to understand tick movement patterns, as this information can be used to improve management and predictive modelling of tick population dynamics. Evolutionary analysis of genetic divergence, gene flow and local adaptation provides insight on movement patterns at large spatiotemporal scales.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMar Pollut Bull
August 2024
Institute of Northern Engineering, Water and Environmental Research Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK 99775, USA; Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Division of Wildlife Conservation, Fairbanks, AK 99701, USA. Electronic address:
Steller sea lions (SSL) are sentinels for monitoring environmental contaminants in remote areas of the Aleutian Islands, Alaska. Therefore, concentrations of several organochlorines (OCs) were measured in blood from 123 SSL pups sampled from 3 regions; the western Aleutian Islands (WAI), central Aleutian Islands (CAI), and the central Gulf of Alaska. Blood, blubber, and milk from 12 adult female SSL from WAI, CAI and southeast Alaska also were analyzed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRes Integr Peer Rev
June 2024
Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Heart of the Hills Fisheries Science Center, 5103 Junction Highway, Mountain Home, TX, 78058, USA.
Background: As the production of scientific manuscripts and journal options both increase, the peer review process remains at the center of quality control. Recent advances in understanding reviewer biases and behaviors along with electronic manuscript handling records have allowed unprecedented investigations into the peer review process.
Methods: We examined a sample of six journals within the field of fisheries science (and all published by the American Fisheries Society) specifically looking for changes in reviewer invitation rates, review time, patterns of reviewer agreements, and rejection rates relative to different forms of blinding.
Sensors (Basel)
May 2024
Quantitative Ecology and Spatial Technologies Laboratory, Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Aquaculture, Mississippi State University, Starkville, MS 39762, USA.
Accelerometers worn by animals produce distinct behavioral signatures, which can be classified accurately using machine learning methods such as random forest decision trees. The objective of this study was to identify accelerometer signal separation among parsimonious behaviors. We achieved this objective by (1) describing functional differences in accelerometer signals among discrete behaviors, (2) identifying the optimal window size for signal pre-processing, and (3) demonstrating the number of observations required to achieve the desired level of model accuracy,.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDifferences in local habitat conditions are often implicated as drivers for morphological and genetic divergence in natural populations. However, there are still relatively few studies regarding how divergent habitats influence patterns for morphotypes and genetic lineages in aquatic invertebrates. In this study, we explored the morphological patterns, genetic divergence, and distributions of a bivalve, , in a lotic-lentic system.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVector Borne Zoonotic Dis
October 2024
Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, University of Mississippi Medical Center, Jackson, Mississippi, USA.
Early detection and monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 infections in animal populations living in close proximity to humans is crucial for preventing reverse zoonosis of new viral strains. Evidence accumulated has revealed widespread SARS-CoV-2 infection among white-tailed deer (WTD), () populations in the United States except in the southeast region. Therefore, the objective was to conduct surveillance for evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection among WTD in Mississippi.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEcology
June 2024
Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, Front Royal, Virginia, USA.
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.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Rep
April 2024
Apex Resource Management Solutions, Ottawa, ON, Canada.
Dominant vegetation in many ecosystems is an integral component of structure and habitat. In many drylands, native shrubs function as foundation species that benefit other plants and animals. However, invasive exotic plant species can comprise a significant proportion of the vegetation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPolymers (Basel)
March 2024
Synthetic and Systems Biology Innovation Hub, Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA.
The non-degradable nature of petroleum-based plastics and the dependence on petroleum-based products in daily life and production are dilemmas of human development today. We hereby developed a plastic waste upcycling process to address these challenges. A multi-stream fraction strategy was developed to process poly (ethylene terephthalate) (PET) plastics into soluble and insoluble fractions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNat Commun
March 2024
Center for Large Landscape Conservation, Bozeman, MT, 59771, USA.
PLoS One
March 2024
Department of Integrative Biology, University of Texas, Austin, Texas, United States of America.
Multiple studies across a variety of scientific disciplines have shown that the number of times that a paper is shared on Twitter (now called X) is correlated with the number of citations that paper receives. However, these studies were not designed to answer whether tweeting about scientific papers causes an increase in citations, or whether they were simply highlighting that some papers have higher relevance, importance or quality and are therefore both tweeted about more and cited more. The authors of this study are leading science communicators on Twitter from several life science disciplines, with substantially higher follower counts than the average scientist, making us uniquely placed to address this question.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNat Ecol Evol
May 2024
North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, Raleigh, NC, USA.
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.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNat Commun
March 2024
Garvan Institute of Medical Research, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
DNA methylation (5mC) is a repressive gene regulatory mark widespread in vertebrate genomes, yet the developmental dynamics in which 5mC patterns are established vary across species. While mammals undergo two rounds of global 5mC erasure, teleosts, for example, exhibit localized maternal-to-paternal 5mC remodeling. Here, we studied 5mC dynamics during the embryonic development of sea lamprey, a jawless vertebrate which occupies a critical phylogenetic position as the sister group of the jawed vertebrates.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMov Ecol
March 2024
Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, University of Florida, P.O. Box 110410, Gainesville, FL, USA.
Background: Understanding how to connect habitat remnants to facilitate the movement of species is a critical task in an increasingly fragmented world impacted by human activities. The identification of dispersal routes and corridors through connectivity analysis requires measures of landscape resistance but there has been no consensus on how to calculate resistance from habitat characteristics, potentially leading to very different connectivity outcomes.
Methods: We propose a new model, called the Time-Explicit Habitat Selection (TEHS) model, that can be directly used for connectivity analysis.
Sci Rep
February 2024
School of Biological Sciences, Washington State University, Pullman, WA, 99164-4236, USA.
The diets of the eight species of ursids range from carnivory (e.g., polar bears, Ursus maritimus) to insectivory (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPathogens
February 2024
U.S. Geological Survey, Montana Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit, University of Montana, Missoula, MT 59812, USA.
Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a prion disease affecting cervid species, both free-ranging and captive populations. As the geographic range continues to expand and disease prevalence continues to increase, CWD will have an impact on cervid populations, local economies, and ecosystem health. Mitigation of this "wicked" disease will require input from many different stakeholders including hunters, landowners, research biologists, wildlife managers, and others, working together.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Hered
May 2024
Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology Program, Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA.
The lower Rio Grande and Pecos River of the southwest United States have been heavily modified by human activities, profoundly impacting the integrity of their aquatic wildlife. In this context, we focused our study on the population genomics of the Rio Grande Cooter (Pseudemys gorzugi), a freshwater turtle of increasing conservation concern, residing in these two rivers and their tributaries. The genetic data revealed two distinct populations: one in the Pecos and Black Rivers of New Mexico and another in the Rio Grande and Devils River of Texas, with admixed individuals identified at the confluence of the Rio Grande and Pecos River.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNat Ecol Evol
April 2024
Institute of Environment, Coastlines and Oceans Division, and Department of Biological Sciences, Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA.
Climate change is altering the functioning of foundational ecosystems. While the direct effects of warming are expected to influence individual species, the indirect effects of warming on species interactions remain poorly understood. In marine systems, as tropical herbivores undergo poleward range expansion, they may change food web structure and alter the functioning of key habitats.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Data
February 2024
University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.
Sub-Saharan Africa is under-represented in global biodiversity datasets, particularly regarding the impact of land use on species' population abundances. Drawing on recent advances in expert elicitation to ensure data consistency, 200 experts were convened using a modified-Delphi process to estimate 'intactness scores': the remaining proportion of an 'intact' reference population of a species group in a particular land use, on a scale from 0 (no remaining individuals) to 1 (same abundance as the reference) and, in rare cases, to 2 (populations that thrive in human-modified landscapes). The resulting bii4africa dataset contains intactness scores representing terrestrial vertebrates (tetrapods: ±5,400 amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals) and vascular plants (±45,000 forbs, graminoids, trees, shrubs) in sub-Saharan Africa across the region's major land uses (urban, cropland, rangeland, plantation, protected, etc.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Parasitol
February 2024
602 Big Creek Drive, Sherwood, Arkansas 72120.
During May 2022 and again in March 2023, 5 quillbacks, Carpiodes cyprinus, were collected from the Verdigris River, Wagoner County, Oklahoma (n = 1), and the Black River, Lawrence County, Arkansas (n = 4), and their gill, gallbladder, fins, integument, musculature, and other major organs were macroscopically examined for myxozoans. Gill lamellae from the single quillback from the Verdigris River was infected with a new myxozoan, Thelohanellus oklahomaensis n. sp.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGlob Chang Biol
January 2024
Institute of Biology, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
Comp Biochem Physiol A Mol Integr Physiol
April 2024
Zoophysiology, Department of Bioscience, Aarhus University, Denmark.
Assessments of arterial and venous blood gases are required to understand the function of respiratory organs in animals at different stages of development. We measured blood gases in the arteries entering and veins leaving the chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) in embryonic alligators (Alligator mississippiensis). The CAM accounts for virtually all gas exchange in these animals, and we hypothesized that the CAM vasculature would be larger in eggs incubated in hypoxia (10% O for 50% or 70% of incubation), which would be reflected in a lower partial pressure of CO (PCO).
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