Elucidating mechanisms underlying amphibian declines in North America using hierarchical spatial models

Amphibian populations are declining globally at unprecedented rates but statistically rigorous identification of mechanisms is lacking. Identification of reasons underlying large-scale declines is imperative to plan and implement effective conservation efforts. Most research on amphibian population decline has focused on local populations and local factors. However, the ubiquity of declines across species and landscapes suggests that causal factors at a broader scale are also important. Elucidation of the mechanisms driving population change has lagged, mainly because data have been unavailable at continental scales. We propose to address this need by assembling data to answer questions about broad-scale drivers...

Categories: Data, Project; Types: Downloadable, GeoTIFF, Map Service, Raster; Tags: Active, All Working Groups, Amphibians, Ecosystems, Land Resources, All tags... animals, Fewer tags

Quantitative evidence for the effects of multiple drivers on continental-scale amphibian declines

Since amphibian declines were first proposed as a global phenomenon over a quarter century ago, the conservation community has made little progress in halting or reversing these trends. The early search for a “smoking gun” was replaced with the expectation that declines are caused by multiple drivers. While field observations and experiments have identified factors leading to increased local extinction risk, evidence for effects of these drivers is lacking at large spatial scales. Here, we use observations of 389 time-series of 83 species and complexes from 61 study areas across North America to test the effects of 4 of the major hypothesized drivers of declines. While we find that local amphibian populations are...

Categories: Publication; Types: Citation

Exogenous and endogenous factors influence invasive reptile movement at multiple scales, 2018 - 2019

These data reflect movement values for brown treesnakes from Guam that were translocated (moved by humans) to new locations or were resident (left in place) on Guam. The data are related to the specimen's treatment group, individual values, locations and other details affiliated with radio telemetry based acquisition and positional changes by the individual snakes across tracking events. The data were collected to help inform early detection and rapid response efforts for brown treesnakes in the Mariana Islands.

Categories: Data; Tags: Ecology, Guam, Mariana Islands, USGS Science Data Catalog (SDC), Wildlife Biology, All tags... brown treesnake, early detection and rapid response, environment, movement, Fewer tags

Spatial mark-recapture and chew card rat data on Guam and Rota, 2018-2019

We provide four datasets: Mark recapture and trapping effort, Grid layout, Chew cards, and Trail camera validation. Mark recapture and trapping effort has one row for every live-trap night, including the unique grid identification code, date of trap check, cumulative rain amount from the 24-hr period before the trap check, unique trap identification, trap status, unique individual rat identification (ID) and associated morphometrics, and rat fate. Grid layout includes the unique grid identification code, unique trap identification, and GPS coordinates of the traps. Chew cards has one row for every chew-card night, including the unique grid identification code, date of chew-card check, unique chew-card identification,...

Categories: Data; Tags: Guam, Rota, USGS Science Data Catalog (SDC), biota, relative abundance analysis, All tags... wildlife population management, Fewer tags