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Scholarly Works, Freshwater Mollusk Conservation Center

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https://hdl.handle.net/10919/52252
Research articles, presentations, and other scholarship

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Browsing Scholarly Works, Freshwater Mollusk Conservation Center by Department "Fish and Wildlife Conservation"

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    Bat activity following repeated prescribed fire in the central Appalachians, USA
    Austin, Lauren V.; Silvis, Alexander; Muthersbaugh, Michael S.; Powers, Karen E.; Ford, W. Mark (2018-12-27)
    Background To restore and manage fire-adapted forest communities in the central Appalachians, USA, land managers are now increasingly prioritizing use of prescribed fire. However, it is unclear how the reintroduction of fire following decades of suppression will affect bat communities, particularly where white-nose syndrome-related population declines of many cave-hibernating bat species have occurred. To address this concern, we monitored and compared bat activity in burned and unburned habitat across a temporal gradient in western Virginia. Results We found evidence for slightly positive fire effects on activity levels of the northern long-eared bat (Myotis septentrionalis [Trouessart, 1897]), Indiana bat (Myotis sodalis [Miller and Allen, 1928]), little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus [Le Conte, 1831]), big brown bat (Eptesicus fuscus [Palisot de Beauvois, 1796])/silver-haired bat (Lasionycteris noctivagans [Le Conte, 1831]) group, all high-frequency bats, and all bat species combined. We observed temporal effects only for the big brown bat, with a negative relationship between activity and time since fire. Conclusions Because response of bat activity was neutral to weakly positive relative to burned forest condition, our results suggest that bats are not a resource that would impede the use of this management tool in the central Appalachians.
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    Periodic growth and growth cessations in the federally endangered freshwater mussel Cumberlandian combshell using a hierarchical Bayesian approach
    Hua, Dan; Jiao, Yan; Neves, Richard; Jones, Jess W. (Inter-Research, 2016-12-29)
    Understanding and monitoring life history traits is often important in endangered species conservation. Populations of the endangered mussel Cumberlandian combshell Epioblasma brevidens have continued to decline in the Powell River, USA. Understanding and modeling mussel growth is critical for effective reintroduction of this endangered species. In this study, 2 yr old E. brevidens that were produced in our laboratory were released to the Powell River in 2009 to augment this declining population. A mark-recapture monitoring approach using passive integrated transponder (PIT) tags was used to assess the survival and growth of the released mussels. Hierarchical Bayesian growth models incorporating individual growth variations, periodic growth and growth cessations, along with multiple release occasions were developed and compared to the classic von Bertalanffy growth model. Our results showed that the hierarchical model that incorporated individual growth variation gave the best estimates of model parameters, yielding the lowest deviance information criterion value. Mussels exhibited different growth rates (K), including 0.015, 0.026, 0.110 and 0.050 (mo⁻¹), corresponding to the duration of laboratory culture (ages 2, 3 and 4 yr old) and a growth cessation (GC) for 5.98 mo, respectively. The other parameters of asymptotic length (L∞) and age at zero length (t₀) were 51.36 mm and −0.648 mo. The flexible structure of Bayesian hierarchical models allowed us to examine growth characteristics of E. brevidens in a changing environment to better understand the details of its growth and lifespan, thus providing useful data for conservation management.