Adam A. Ahlers

Kansas State University | KSU · Department of Horticulture and Natural Resources

Abstract We assessed risk factors for Toxoplasma gondii exposure in semiaquatic mammals in east-central Illinois, USA. This agricultural region has extensive drainage systems that could potentially transport T. gondii oocysts into the watershed. We used muskrats (Ondatra zibethicus) and American mink (Neovison vison) as sentinels of watershed conta...

American mink (Neovison vison) are secretive, semi-aquatic carnivores that often require noninvasive methods based on field signs such as tracks and scat for determining their spatial distribution. Most previous assessments of survey methods for American mink have been conducted in the United Kingdom where mink are an invasive species. We evaluated...

Increased agricultural production within the Grand Prairie region, USA, has resulted in drainage of most natural wetlands within the landscape. Muskrats (Ondatra zibethicus (L., 1766)) in this region have shifted much of their distribution to riparian habitats that have unstable flow regimes and flood inundation times that could be related to posit...

Modern farming practices in the midwestern United States have drastically altered the landscape. Most wetlands have been drained, and small streams are channelized to transport excess water away from tile-drained agricultural fields. Loss of critical wetland habitat has shifted the distribution of muskrats Ondatra zibethicus, an economically import...

Resource distribution, habitat structure, and predators greatly influence spatial and temporal landscape use by prey species. The “risky places” hypothesis establishes prey will proactively respond to predators' presence based on habitat cues, whereas the “risky times” hypothesis predicts prey will reactively respond by increasing vigilance in the...

Undergraduate students enrolled in ecology courses read peer‐reviewed, scientific literature to learn how hypotheses are tested and to understand conclusions from research. This technical material can be difficult to understand for many students, thus inhibiting learning processes and reducing interest in courses or associated content. Using creati...

Human-driven environmental changes shape ecological communities from local to global scales. Within cities, landscape-scale patterns and processes and species characteristics generally drive local-scale wildlife diversity. However, cities differ in their structure, species pools, geographies and histories, calling into question the extent to which...

Declines in hunter numbers across the United States make hunter recruitment, retention, and reactivation (R3) a high priority for wildlife management. As wildlife management agencies and nongovernmental organizations seek to reach new audiences, college campuses present a unique opportunity to cultivate nontraditional path hunters. Despite recent p...

Apparent declines in Ondatra zibethicus Linnaeus (Muskrat) populations across North America necessitate information regarding key demographic parameters. In the Flint Hills ecoregion in Kansas, USA, Muskrat habitat is generally characterized by man-made wetlands used for ranching operations. The relative quality of these habitats for Muskrat popula...

Many carnivore populations have experienced substantial declines and are at increased risk of extinction, mainly due to negative interactions with humans and biological traits that make them susceptible to habitat loss and fragmentation, often driven by agricultural expansion. Carnivore community richness is likely influenced by many direct and ind...

Anthropogenic activities since the European colonization of the North American Great Plains have drastically altered landscape composition and configuration, subsequently affecting native biodiversity. These contemporary human‐modified landscapes may affect mammal species' distributions, diel activity patterns, habitat use, and interspecific intera...

Grasslands are among the most widely distributed, but most imperiled, biomes on Earth. North American grasslands once covered ~162 million ha prior to European colonization, but only ~30 % of this landcover currently remains due to continued human-modified landscape changes. Strategic conservation of remaining grassland landcover, which considers s...

Recent studies have documented benefits of small, prescribed fire and wildfire for grassland-dependent wildlife, such as lesser prairie-chickens (Tympanuchus pallidicintus), but wildlife demographic response to the scale and intensity of megafire (wildfire >40,000 ha) in modern, fragmented grasslands remains unknown. Limited available grassland hab...

The relationships among rangeland management practices and ecosystem on soil and nutrient processes are complex. Simulation models can provide valuable insight into this complexity to guide future research and management decisions for sustainable grazing systems. The objective of this analysis was to evaluate the combinations of grazing management...

Interspecific interactions among predators can shape ecological communities across trophic levels, including among predator guilds. The strength and directions of these interactions, however, may vary spatially and temporally in regions undergoing widespread landscape changes (e.g., urbanization, agricultural production). We investigated intraguild...

Beef is a good source of several vitamins and minerals but data on the net contribution to the human diet is lacking. The objective was to quantify the net nutrient contribution of the beef supply chain to provide vitamins and minerals to the human diet. Beef cattle production parameters for the beef supply chain were as described by Baber et al.,...

Context Human-modified landscapes can structure species’ distributions and supplant traditional biotic range-limiting processes. Understanding the direction and scale of these processes is necessary to enhance species conservation efforts. Objectives We investigated how the distribution of a prairie-obligate carnivore, swift fox (Vulpes velox), is...

Beef is a good source of several vitamins and minerals but data on the net contribution to the human diet is lacking. The objective was to quantify the net nutrient contribution of the beef supply chain to Fe, Zn, Se, P, B12, B6, riboflavin, niacin, and choline in the human diet. Beef cattle production parameters for the beef supply chain were as d...

Limited research has examined economic cost analyses for rotational-stocking versus continuous-stocking at different stocking rates in a particular region, which makes it difficult to provide guidance to cattle producers in evaluating different grazing strategies. The objective is to evaluate and compare economic costs for rotational and continuous...

Time is a fundamental component of ecological processes. How animal behavior changes over time has been explored through well-known ecological theories like niche partitioning and predator-prey dynamics. Yet, changes in animal behavior within the shorter 24-hour light-dark cycle have largely gone unstudied. Understanding if an animal can adjust the...

Time is a fundamental component of ecological processes. How animal behavior changes over time has been explored through well-known ecological theories like niche partitioning and predator-prey dynamics. Yet, changes in animal behavior within the shorter 24-hour light-dark cycle have largely gone unstudied. Understanding if an animal can adjust the...

Urban biodiversity provides critical ecosystem services and is a key component to environmentally and socially sustainable cities. However, biodiversity varies greatly within and among cities, leading to human communities with changing and unequal experiences with nature. The "luxury effect," a hypothesis that predicts a positive correlation betwee...

Insufficient funding is a major impediment to conservation efforts around the world. In the United States, a decline in hunting participation threatens sustainability of the “user‐pay, public benefit” model that has supported wildlife conservation for nearly 100 years, forcing wildlife management agencies to contemplate alternative funding strategi...

Muskrat (Ondatra zibethicus) populations show long-term and widespread declines across North America, necessitating research into potential mechanistic explanations, including population health. Previous research established reference hematology values, a proxy of individual health, of muskrats occurring in highly modified ecosystems. However, our...

Declining participation in hunting, especially among young adult hunters, affects the ability of state and federal agencies to achieve goals for wildlife management and decreases revenue for conservation. For wildlife agencies hoping to engage diverse audiences in hunter recruitment, retention, and reactivation (R3) efforts, university settings pro...

Muskrats Ondatra zibethicus are semiaquatic herbivores experiencing long-term and widespread population declines across North America. Translocation may be a viable tool to bolster or reestablish local populations; however, subsequent effects of translocation on muskrats are unknown. We live-trapped and translocated radiomarked muskrats (n = 65) du...

A well-studied predator–prey relationship between American mink (Neovison vison (Schreber, 1777); formerly known as Mustela vison Schreber, 1777) and muskrats (Ondatra zibethicus (Linnaeus, 1766)) in Canada has advanced our understanding of population cycles including the influence of density dependence and lagged responses of predators to prey abu...

Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve (TAPR) is a rural protected natural area in Kansas, United States. This parcel of public land provides visitors from varying areas with opportunities to experience a remaining collective of the tallgrass prairie ecosystem that once spanned large areas of North America. TAPR also provides visitors with opportuniti...

Understanding how biodiversity responds to urbanization is challenging, due in part to the single‐city focus of most urban ecological research. Here, we delineate continent‐scale patterns in urban species assemblages by leveraging data from a multi‐city camera trap survey and quantify how differences in greenspace availability and average housing d...

• Muskrats Ondatra zibethicus are reported to have wide‐ranging effects on wetland habitats, sometimes earning them the labels ‘keystone species’ or ‘ecosystem engineers’. • We conducted an extensive review of the scientific literature and evaluated evidence for muskrats as potential keystone species or ecosystem engineers, and more generally, thei...

An accurate understanding of harvest trends is required for effective wildlife management. Trapper harvest data represent valuable long‐term data for evaluating patterns and trends for wildlife species at broad spatiotemporal scales. Inferring accurate trends from harvest data, however, first requires identifying and controlling for confounding fac...

Waterborne transmission of Toxoplasma gondii is assumed to be enhanced in areas with human-altered landscapes (e.g., urbanization, agriculture) and increased populations of non-native domestic and feral cats (Felis catus). However, little is known concerning T. gondii exposure risks in more natural watersheds (e.g., reduced human footprint, no dome...

Landscape configuration and composition can influence the spatial distribution of species. Cross-scale interactions may exist when multiscale effects interplay to shape species’ distribution patterns. Objectives We investigated how the spatial distribution of a semiaquatic mammal, muskrat (Ondatra zibethicus), is influenced by local-scale resource...

Waterfowl management in North America is partially informed by hunter harvest data, which includes the number and sex of each species harvested. Self-reporting harvest via online surveys or paper forms is common for many agencies and at wildlife management areas. For these data to be useful to managers, however, it is critical that self-reported ha...

The Flint Hills represent the largest tract of tallgrass prairie in North America and is located near the western edge of the native range of the Virginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana). This region is undergoing rapid landscape changes (e.g., urbanization, agriculture, woody encroachment) that are negatively affecting mammal communities. Although...

One of three articles published on this topic in The Wildlife Professional, a publication of The Wildlife Society.

Core Ideas Species identification skills are challenging to develop, necessitating effective pedagogies. Watercolor painting may enhance students’ ability to learn challenging scientific material. Art‐based nature identification assignments may provide enhanced student learning opportunities. Accurately identifying waterfowl species can help studen...

Research on urban wildlife can help promote coexistence and guide future interactions between humans and wildlife in developed regions, but most such investigations are limited to short‐term, single‐species studies, typically conducted within a single city. This restricted focus prevents scientists from recognizing global patterns and first princip...

Muskrats are declining throughout much of their native range in North America. This preliminary search in the Flint Hills of northeastern Kansas attempted to investigate some of the ecological factors that influence muskrat abundances and habitat selection. Drought and other variables in the Flint Hills made this especially challenging and the proj...

The Flint Hills ecoregion is the largest remaining tract of native tallgrass prairie in North America. Contemporary landscape change (e.g., urbanization, agricultural production) in this region is likely affecting native biodiversity; however, we have a limited understanding of how these changes might affect carnivores. We used camera traps distrib...

Muskrats (Ondatra zibethicus) are native to North America and widely distributed across the continent. Recent evidence and anecdotal reports suggest that muskrat populations may be declining; however, this assumption has not been rigorously evaluated. We used 42 years of muskrat harvest data (1970–2012) from 37 states to examine trends in muskrat p...

As the number of hunters dwindles, initiatives by state wildlife agencies to recruit, retain and reactivate hunters have been on the rise. But these R3 efforts might be overlooking a very fruitful ground: the college campus. At colleges and universities across the country, millions of young people are eager to try out new activities, making them an...

Agricultural production is considered one of the leading drivers of declines in wildlife populations, and educating future land managers about agriculture’s threat to biodiversity is required to help restore and maintain wildlife populations. University students enrolled in agriculture-based majors will likely be future leaders in the agricultural...

Context Land-use change can reduce and isolate suitable habitat generating spatial variation in resource availability. Improving species distribution models requires a multi-scale understanding of resource requirements and species’ sensitivities to novel landscapes. Objectives We investigated how the spatial distribution of supplementary habitats (...

Muskrat (Ondatra zibethicus) populations in North America appear in decline in parts of their geographic range, prompting in-depth investigations into population trends. However, long-term data on muskrat population abundance are rare and managers often rely on harvest data to track relative changes in population sizes. These data are likely biased...

Procyon lotor (Raccoon) is a habitat and dietary generalist that reaches its greatest population densities in heterogeneous, moderately fragmented landscapes. Even within such landscapes, a variety of natural and anthropogenic habitat variables can influence the local activity of Raccoons, and therefore their potential impact as nest predators. We...

Climate change is predicted to increase the frequency of droughts and intensity of seasonal precipitation in many regions. Semiaquatic mammals should be vulnerable to this increased variability in precipitation, especially in human-modified landscapes where dispersal to suitable habitat or temporary refugia may be limited. Using six years of presen...

No abstract is available for this article.

Baseline hematologic and serum chemistry values are used by veterinarians and wildlife biologists to identify abnormally high or low levels of particular blood parameters in a target species. This vital information can assist animal care providers in making informed decisions on the care of wildlife and help to determine diagnoses for certain illne...

Increased agricultural production within the Grand Prairie region U.S.A. has resulted in drainage of most natural wetlands within the landscape. Semi-aquatic species that are associated with these habitats have shifted much of their distribution to riparian habitats that have unstable flow regimes and inundation times that could be related to posit...