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Frank Thompson

Abstract (from Wiley): The brown-headed nuthatch (Sitta pusilla) was likely extirpated from Missouri in the early 1900s as a result of habitat loss through extensive logging. Conservation partners including the Missouri Department of Conservation, United States Forest Service, University of Missouri, and others, relocated 102 brown-headed nuthatches from Ouachita National Forest in Arkansas to Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri in 2020 and 2021 to establish a local population. We tracked 50 individuals for 24 ± 11 (median ± SD) days after release using radio telemetry and monitored movements in relation to sex and whether a bird was captured alone or as part of a group. We examined 25-day survival using a spatial...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
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Identifying and Evaluating Adaptation Science for Forest Habitats and Bird Communities in the Northeast
The forests of the Northeastern United States are home to some of the greatest diversity of nesting songbirds in the country. Climate change, shifts in natural disturbance regimes, and invasive species pose threats to forest habitats and bird species in the northeastern United States and represent major challenges to natural resource managers. Although broad adaptation approaches have been suggested for sustaining forested habitats under global change, it is unclear how effective the implementation of these strategies at local and regional scales will be for maintaining habitat conditions for a broad suite of forest-dependent bird species over time. Moreover, given the diversity in forest stakeholders across the...
Forests in the Eastern United States are changing in response to ecological succession, tree harvest and other disturbances and climate change has the potential to further change these forests. We predicted the distribution and abundance of common tree species across portions of the Eastern U.S. under alternative climate scenarios that varied in the amount of warming by the end of the century from 1.1 to 4.2 degrees C. We used a forest landscape change model to forecast changes in tree abundances and distribution in the North Atlantic region of the U.S. while accounting for climate change, succession, and harvest. We then considered a broader region of the U.S. and combined our results with results from previous...
Abstract (from Nature Climate Change): Understanding global change processes that threaten species viability is critical for assessing vulnerability and deciding on appropriate conservation actions1. Here we combine individual-based2 and metapopulation models to estimate the effects of climate change on annual breeding productivity and population viability up to 2100 of a common forest songbird, the Acadian flycatcher (Empidonax virescens), across the Central Hardwoods ecoregion, a 39.5-million-hectare area of temperate and broadleaf forests in the USA. Our approach integrates local-scale, individual breeding productivity, estimated from empirically derived demographic parameters that vary with landscape and climatic...
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Examining the Responses of Species to Climate Change: Will Wildlife Face Biological Thresholds?
Historical and projected climate data point toward significant changes in the future for the Northeastern and Midwestern U.S. These changes will include impacts to many species (like birds, fish, and mammals), ecosystems (like forests), and natural resources (like water) that humans appreciate and rely on. In order to prepare for these changes, land and resource managers need to be able to predict how species will respond, what specific mechanisms are driving these changes, and what thresholds wildlife species may soon be pushed across. Crossing these thresholds could lead to rapid change or decline in the health of a wildlife population. In response to this need, a team of researchers is working to identify the...
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