Briana Abrahms

University of Washington Seattle | UW · Department of Biology

Individual behavioural specialisation has far-reaching effects on fitness and population persistence. Theory predicts that unconditional site fidelity, that is fidelity to a site independent of past outcome, provides a fitness advantage in unpredictable environments. However, the benefits of alternative site fidelity strategies driving intraspecifi...

Community ecology was traditionally an integrative science devoted to studying interactions between species and their abiotic environments in order to predict species' geographic distributions and abundances. Yet for philosophical and methodological reasons it has become divided into two enterprises: one devoted to local experimentation on species...

The myriad challenges facing biodiversity under climate change are reflected in the challenges facing managers planning for these impacts. An ever-expanding number of recommendations and tools for climate change adaptation exist to aid managers in these efforts, yet navigating these various resources can lead to information overload and paralysis i...

Background Because empirical studies of animal movement are most-often site- and species-specific, we lack understanding of the level of consistency in movement patterns across diverse taxa, as well as a framework for quantitatively classifying movement patterns. We aim to address this gap by determining the extent to which statistical signatures o...

Policies aimed at reducing wildlife-related conflict must address the underlying causes.

Climate change and human–wildlife conflict are both pressing challenges for biodiversity conservation and human well-being in the Anthropocene. Climate change is a critical yet underappreciated amplifier of human–wildlife conflict, as it exacerbates resource scarcity, alters human and animal behaviours and distributions, and increases human–wildlif...

Recovering marine animal populations and climate-driven shifts in their distributions are colliding with growing ocean use by humans. One such example is the bycatch of whales in commercial fishing, which poses a significant threat to the conservation and continued recovery of these protected animals and is a major barrier to sustainable fisheries....

Long-term climate changes and extreme climate events differentially impact animal populations, yet whether and why these processes may act synergistically or antagonistically remains unknown. Disentangling these potentially interactive effects is critical for predicting population outcomes as the climate changes. Here, we leverage the “press–pulse”...

Site fidelity—the tendency to return to previously visited locations—is widespread across taxa. Returns may be driven by several mechanisms, including memory, habitat selection, or chance; however, pattern‐based definitions group different generating mechanisms under the same label of ‘site fidelity’, often assuming memory as the main driver. We pr...

Animal migration plays a central role in many ecological and evolutionary processes, yet migratory populations worldwide are increasingly threatened. Adjusting migration timing to match ecosystem phenology is key to survival in dynamic and changing ecosystems, especially in an era of human-induced rapid environmental change. Social cues are increas...

Marine predators face the challenge of reliably finding prey that is patchily distributed in space and time. Predators make movement decisions at multiple spatial and temporal scales, yet we have a limited understanding of how habitat selection at multiple scales translates into foraging performance. In the ocean, there is mounting evidence that su...

Understanding the degree to which animals are shifting their phenology to track optimal conditions as the climate changes is essential to predicting ecological responses to global change. Species at low latitudes or high trophic levels are theoretically expected to exhibit weaker phenological responses than other species, but limited research on tr...

Seabirds must find food efficiently in the dynamic ocean environment to succeed at raising chicks. In theory, site familiarity, gained by prior experience in a place, should increase foraging efficiency when prey is predictable, and translate into increased reproductive success, though this is difficult to test empirically. To address this, we exam...

Matching the timing of life history transitions with ecosystem phenology is critical for the survival of many species, especially those undertaking long‐distance migrations. As a result, whether and how migratory populations adjust timing of life history transitions in response to environmental variability are important questions in ecology and con...

Site fidelity, or the behavior of returning to previously visited locations, has been observed across taxa and ecosystems. By developing familiarity with a particular location, site fidelity provides a range of benefits and is advantageous in stable or predictable environments. However, the Anthropocene is characterized by rates of environmental ch...

Migrating animals may benefit from social or experiential learning, yet whether and how these learning processes interact or change over time to produce observed migration patterns remains unexplored. Using 16 years of satellite-tracking data from 105 reintroduced whooping cranes, we reveal an interplay between social and experiential learning in m...

Despite the increasing frequency and magnitude of extreme climate events, little is known about how their impacts flow through social and ecological systems or whether management actions can dampen deleterious effects. We examined how the record 2014–2016 Northeast Pacific marine heatwave influenced trade-offs in managing conflict between conservat...

The forage maturation hypothesis (FMH) states that energy intake for ungulates is maximised when forage biomass is at intermediate levels. Nevertheless, metabolic allometry and different digestive systems suggest that resource selection should vary across ungulate species. By combining GPS relocations with remotely sensed data on forage characteris...

Group living in species can have complex consequences for individuals, populations, and ecosystems. Thus, estimating group density and size is often essential for understanding population dynamics, interspecific interactions, and conservation needs of group‐living species. Spatial capture–recapture (SCR) has been used to model both individual and g...

The use of animal-borne devices in wildlife ecology and conservation has expanded in recent decades. Animal-borne devices allow a suite of data to be collected, including locational, acoustic, and video. They have revolutionized our ability to collect measurements from animals and the environments that they inhabit, as well as promote the conservat...

Dynamic ocean management (DOM), a type of marine spatial planning in which management decisions are updated in response to changing environmental, biological, or socioeconomic conditions, holds promise for balancing tradeoffs between conservation and marine resource use. However, as climate change continues to drive unprecedented oceanic changes, i...

Climate change is intensifying conflicts between people and wildlife

Ecologists and conservation biologists increasingly rely on spatial capture‐recapture (SCR) and movement modeling to study animal populations. Historically, SCR has focused on population‐level processes (e.g., vital rates, abundance, density, and distribution), while animal movement modeling has focused on the behavior of individuals (e.g., activit...

Accurate forecasts of how animals respond to climate‐driven environmental change are needed to prepare for future redistributions, however, it is unclear which temporal scales of environmental variability give rise to predictability of species distributions. We examined the temporal scales of environmental variability that best predicted spatial ab...

Background Habitat suitability models give insight into the ecological drivers of species distributions and are increasingly common in management and conservation planning. Telemetry data can be used in habitat models to describe where animals were present, however this requires the use of presence-only modeling approaches or the generation of ‘pse...

Resource tracking, where animals increase energy gain by moving to track phenological variation in resources across space, is emerging as a fundamental attribute of animal movement ecology. However, a theoretical framework to understand when and where resource tracking should occur, and how resource tracking should lead to emergent ecological patte...

When assessing harmful human-wildlife interactions, researchers often attempt to calculate the risk that an interaction will occur. However, these analyses often quantify risk based on temporally static or spatially coarse measures of species distributions and human activity. As a result, risk estimates often do not reflect the dynamic nature of an...

Understanding the drivers of movement, migration and distribution of individuals is important for insight into how species will respond to changing environmental conditions. Both abiotic and biotic factors are thought to influence migratory behavior, but their relative roles are difficult to disentangle. For migratory marine predators, both tempera...

Accurately quantifying species’ area requirements is a prerequisite for effective area‐based conservation. This typically involves collecting tracking data on species of interest and then conducting home‐range analyses. Problematically, autocorrelation in tracking data can result in space needs being severely underestimated. Based on previous work,...

The rapid pace of environmental change in the Anthropocene necessitates the development of a new suite of tools for measuring ecosystem dynamics. Sentinel species can provide insight into ecosystem function, identify hidden risks to human health, and predict future change. As sentinels, marine apex (top) predators offer a unique perspective into oc...

Accurately quantifying species' area requirements is a prerequisite for effective area-based conservation. This typically involves collecting tracking data on species of interest and then conducting home-range analyses. Problematically, autocorrelation in tracking data can result in space needs being severely underestimated. Based on the previous w...

Aim Advances in ecological and environmental modelling offer new opportunities for estimating dynamic habitat suitability for highly mobile species and supporting management strategies at relevant spatiotemporal scales. We used an ensemble modelling approach to predict daily, year‐round habitat suitability for a migratory species, the blue whale (B...

In terrestrial systems, the green wave hypothesis posits that migrating animals can enhance foraging opportunities by tracking phenological variation in high-quality forage across space (i.e., “resource waves”). To track resource waves, animals may rely on proximate cues and/or memory of long-term average phenologies. Although there is growing evid...

How animal movement decisions interact with the distribution of resources to shape individual performance is a key question in ecology. However, links between spatial and behavioural ecology and fitness consequences are poorly understood because the outcomes of individual resource selection decisions, such as energy intake, are rarely measured. In...

Resource partitioning is an important process driving habitat use and foraging strategies in sympatric species that potentially compete. Differences in foraging behavior are hypothesized to contribute to species coexistence by facilitating resource partitioning, but little is known on the multiple mechanisms for partitioning that may occur simultan...

Evaluating landscape connectivity and identifying and protecting corridors for animal movement have become central challenges in applied ecology and conservation. Currently, resource selection analyses are widely used to focus corridor planning where animal movement is predicted to occur. An animal's behavioural state (e.g. foraging, dispersing) is...

Understanding how anthropogenic features affect species' abilities to move within landscapes is essential to conservation planning and requires accurate assessment of resource selection for movement by focal species. Yet, the extent to which an individual's behavioural state (e.g. foraging, resting, commuting) influences resource selection has larg...

The discomfort expressed by Masuda and Scharks in linking wildlife declines to social conflict and Smith's concern about harvest effort increasing when wildlife declines reinforce the central message of our Policy Forum: Despite growing evidence of the importance of wildlife-society linkages, these

Background/Question/Methods Advances in movement ecology allow new insights into the impact of human development on wildlife populations. In Botswana’s Okavango Delta, the ecotourism industry creates broad habitat changes through road and settlement construction; in 2012-2013 alone, over 100 kilometers of roads were built in Moremi Game Reserve t...