The Pigeon Guillemot (Cepphus columba) is now the only species of marine bird in Prince William Sound (PWS), Alaska that is listed as "not recovering" on the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill (EVOS) Trustee Council's Injured Resources List and has shown no sign of population recovery. During the 20 years since...
Plant-pollinator mutualisms are one of the most prevalent and economically important mutualisms in nature. Like many other ecological systems, plant-pollinator communities are threatened by anthropogenic activity, both directly (e.g., habitat conversion and fragmentation) and indirectly (e.g., climate change). While we are aware of many of the activities that adversely impact...
The conservation of declining desert fish species requires the identification of relations between fish population dynamics and their environments. Dynamic occupancy modeling, an approach that requires less information than traditional mark-recapture studies, may help identify important factors affecting population processes and aid desert fish conservation and restoration efforts. I used...
This thesis focuses on the nesting ecology and marine space use of Marbled Murrelets (Brachyramphus marmoratus) during the 2007 and 2008 nesting seasons in and around Port Snettisham, a remote mainland fjord in Southeast Alaska. Marbled Murrelets (murrelets) are a declining species throughout most of their range, and their conservation...
We consider the problem of supervised classification of bird species from audio recordings in a real-world acoustic monitoring scenario (i.e. audio data is collected in the field with an omnidirectional microphone, without human supervision). Obtaining better data about bird activity can assist conservation efforts, and improve our understanding of their...
Night is an extraordinary resource. Unlike air, water, or soil, nighttime is a spatio-temporal phenomenon, which leads to many crucial roles. It provides refuge to wildlife species, triggers hormonal and behavioral responses among a wide variety of organisms, and serves as an essential migratory backdrop for species that navigate by...
Each chapter in this expository paper considers a mathematical model of an aspect of animal behavior, and how it affects the patterns of movement across and within a landscape. These models are all directly or indirectly related to questions in either Behavioral Ecology or Landscape Ecology, or both. I first...
Landscape characteristics can strongly influence demographic and genetic processes in wildlife populations. Climate change and human land use are causing many landscapes to change rapidly, and the effects on wildlife populations must be understood to properly manage these threats and design effective conservation strategies. In this dissertation, I explored the...
Columbian black-tailed deer (Odocoileus hemionus columbianus) are important economically, ecologically, and culturally as an indigenous species in western Oregon. Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) observed declines in black-tailed deer populations since the late 1980’s and attributes these declines to reduction in quality and availability of habitat, following the...
Some of the most pressing conservation concerns involve declining populations of species with low fecundity and highly specialized foraging and reproductive requirements. Yet, we often lack a functional understanding of how individuals of those species interact with their environment, specifically how their movement is affected by human-induced changes. In order...