Brooks A. Kohli

Ohio University · Honors Tutorial College

Studies on mammalian community ecology and biogeography are increasingly using functional diversity to advance our understanding of how diversity is maintained and how it varies across space and over time. Functional diversity quantifies the range and prevalence of species traits in an assemblage and provides a means of linking patterns of diversit...

Patterns of species richness along elevation gradients vary with geographic and environmental factors but evidence for similar variation in functional and phylogenetic diversity remains scarce. Here, we provide the most comprehensive evaluation to date of elevational gradients in taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity of rodents – one of...

Aim Mountains provide uniquely informative systems for examining how biodiversity is distributed and identifying the causes of those patterns. Elevational patterns of species richness are well‐documented for many taxa but comparatively few studies have investigated patterns in multiple dimensions of biodiversity along mountainsides, which can revea...

AimWe used the Holarctic northern red-backed vole (Myodes rutilus) as a model organism to improve our understanding of how dynamic, northern high-latitude environments have affected the genetic diversity, demography and distribution of boreal organisms. We tested spatial and temporal hypotheses derived from previous mitochondrial studies, comparati...

We conducted the first assessment of small mammal diversity for three unusually low-elevation stands of Rocky Mountain juniper, known locally as swamp cedars, in White Pine County, Nevada, between 24 May and 1 June 2016. These small patches of woodland add considerable habitat diversity to the expansive low-elevation shrublands in Spring Valley and...

Understanding variation of traits within and among species through time and across space is central to many questions in biology. Many resources assemble species-level trait data, but the data and metadata underlying those trait measurements are often not reported. Here, we introduce FuTRES (Functional Trait Resource for Environmental Studies; pron...

While museum voucher specimens continue to be the standard for species identifications, biodiversity data are increasingly represented by photographic records from camera traps and amateur naturalists. Some species are easily recognized in these pictures, others are impossible to distinguish. Here we quantify the extent to which 335 terrestrial non...

Aim Understanding how ecological communities are assembled remains a grand challenge in ecology with direct implications for charting the future of biodiversity. Trait‐based methods have emerged as the leading approach for quantifying functional community structure (convergence, divergence) but their potential for inferring assembly processes rests...

The open-science movement seeks to increase transparency, reproducibility, and access to scientific data. As primary data, preserved biological specimens represent records of global biodiversity critical to research, conservation, national security, and public health. However, a recent decrease in specimen preservation in public biorepositories is...

Muskellunge Esox masquinongy is a recreationally important species distributed throughout the Ohio, upper Mississippi, and Great Lakes drainages and has been introduced outside of its native range. We conducted a survey of microsatellite DNA variation among 11 populations, natural, managed, and hatchery, in the Ohio River drainage. Microsatellite D...

Null model analysis of species co‐occurrence patterns has long been used to gain insight into community assembly but is often limited to identifying non‐random patterns without providing clarity about underlying ecological mechanisms. This challenge is especially apparent when sampling units are spread across a heterogeneous landscape or along an e...