Understanding how spatial variation in climate correlates with phenotypic variation among individuals may offer insights about local adaptation, population performance, and species’ response to climate change. Desert bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis nelsoni) in the Mojave Desert of southern California experience a broad range of temperature and aridity, inhabiting mountain ranges...
The Pantanal is one of the largest wetlands in the world, covering 195,000 km2 across Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay. It has a unique annual flooding regime with the majority of land being completely inundated during the wet season, which provides important habitat for threatened species such as jaguars (Panthera onca)...
Juniper (Juniperus spp.) encroachment into the sagebrush steppe ecoregion is one of the main causes of sagebrush degradation and can alter the understory vegetative community by outcompeting native shrubs and grasses, which reduces the available forage and cover for small mammals. Coyotes (Canis latrans) are generalist, omnivorous predators in the...
Genetic sampling is used in many wildlife fields to gather data on populations or individuals. In noninvasive genetic sampling, animals do not need to be captured. DNA can be gathered from hair, scat, or other residue shed into the environment. However, this can result in degraded DNA, so it is...
Investigating the insectivorous diet of the Trowbridge’s shrew (Sorex trowbridgii) across forest types can illustrate how forest management affects biotic communities. I used DNA metabarcoding methods with ANML primers to identify stomach and intestines contents from shrews caught in pitfall traps in the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest (HJA) and Willamette...
Competitive exclusion is a key concept in ecology describing the exclusion of one species by another from access to a limited resource. Competitive interactions between chipmunk species in the Great Basin, documented by James Brown in 1970, are often used as a textbook example of competitive exclusion. Whether competitive interactions...
Millions of acres of rangeland in the western U.S. is shared habitat by elk (Cervus canadensis), mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus), and cattle (Bos taurus). Potential competition between these ungulates for the same forage species can be understood from their diet composition. I used DNA metabarcoding methods with trnL primers to...
Sweetpotatoes are a highly nutritious staple crop, playing an important role in global nutritional security. Although the majority of research in the United States (U.S.) focuses on the cultivation of the storage roots, both the leaves and roots are edible. Sweetpotatoes are indigenous to the Andes Region of South America;...