Christine C Rega-Brodsky

Pittsburg State University · Biology

Aim The assembly of species into communities and ecoregions is the result of interacting factors that affect plant and animal distribution and abundance at biogeographic scales. Here, we empirically derive ecoregions for mammals to test whether human disturbance has become more important than climate and habitat resources in structuring communities...

The Eastern Newt (Notophthalmus viridescens) is listed as a species in need of conservation in Kansas due to its limited range and infrequent occurrence in the state. While Eastern Newts have been documented in five counties in southeast Kansas, they remain uncommon throughout the region. Our objective was to analyze wetland features that could inf...

The gray fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) is a mesocarnivore with a broad geographic range in North America, yet its distribution and habitat associations in Kansas have been poorly documented. Using data from a statewide camera trap survey, we opportunistically observed gray fox in five counties in southeast Kansas, including two new county records....

SNAPSHOT USA is a multicontributor, long‐term camera trap survey designed to survey mammals across the United States. Participants are recruited through community networks and directly through a website application (https://www.snapshot-usa.org/). The growing Snapshot dataset is useful, for example, for tracking wildlife population responses to lan...

Soil removal from surface mining activities can create depressions that eventually form wetlands that may support amphibian communities. Little is known about the function of these wetlands that have never been deliberately reclaimed yet have experienced vegetative succession. Amphibian persistence in artificial or disturbed wetlands can indicate h...

There has been a rich history of using birds to study the impacts of urbanization on wildlife communities at both the local and global scale over the last few decades. In this chapter, we review the urban bird community literature to examine trends in its topics across time, frameworks for such studies, and provide suggested areas for future action...

Cities can host significant biological diversity. Yet, urbanisation leads to the loss of habitats, species, and functional groups. Understanding how multiple taxa respond to urbanisation globally is essential to promote and conserve biodiversity in cities. Using a dataset encompassing six terrestrial faunal taxa (amphibians, bats, bees, birds, cara...

Spilogale interrupta (Plains Spotted Skunk) and other species within the Spilo-gale genus have often been documented as using burrows for cover; however, schematics of a Plains Spotted Skunk burrow have only been documented once in the literature. While recovering 2 GPS radio transmitters in the Katy Prairie region of Southeast Texas, we excavated...

Identifying drivers of urban association in wildlife is a central challenge in conservation biology. Traits facilitating access to novel resources and avoiding humans often correspond with urban exploitation in mammal species, but these relationships differ by taxa and trophic guild. Variation among or within traits may be a yet untested explanatio...

Ongoing urbanization and land transformation drive profound changes in ecosystems worldwide, with wildlife responding in myriad ways. Particularly, functional homogenization of wildlife communities due to these widespread changes may reduce biodiversity and urban ecosystem resilience. However, there are benefits of urbanization (e.g., increased res...

Current methods for surveying herpetofauna and small mammals include drift fence arrays with funnel traps or pitfalls traps, visual encounter surveys, and other live-trapping Techniques. These methods can be labor intensive and often result in mortality of captured animals. While game cameras have become an efficient method for passively surveying...

The tricolored bat (Perimyotis subflavus) once commonly occurred throughout the eastern and central United States, but is now experiencing range-wide population declines primarily due to white-nose syndrome and forest fragmentation. Conservation efforts for this species require more information regarding summer maternity roost characteristics, espe...

Since the 1990s, recognition of urban biodiversity research has increased steadily. Knowledge of how ecological communities respond to urban pressures can assist in addressing global questions related to biodiversity. To assess the state of this research field in meeting this aim, we conducted a systematic review of the urban biodiversity literatur...

Managing wildlife populations in the face of global change requires regular data on the abundance and distribution of wild animals, but acquiring these over appropriate spatial scales in a sustainable way has proven challenging. Here we present the data from Snapshot USA 2020, a second annual national mammal survey of the USA. This project involved...

Robotics and autonomous systems are reshaping the world, changing healthcare, food production and biodiversity management. While they will play a fundamental role in delivering the UN Sustainable Development Goals, associated opportunities and threats are yet to be considered systematically. We report on a horizon scan evaluating robotics and auton...

Managing wildlife populations in the face of global change requires regular data on the abundance and distribution of wild animals, but acquiring these over appropriate spatial scales in a sustainable way has proven challenging. Here we present the data from Snapshot USA 2020, a second annual national mammal survey of the locations across 103 array...

Many bat populations have plummeted in North America since the introduction of white-nose syndrome (WNS) in 2006, presenting challenges in researching population health and habitat use of affected species. Traditional survey techniques such as mist-netting and radio-telemetry have become increasingly time-consuming post-WNS due to the rarity of WNS...

Fifteen years have passed since the introduction of white-nose syndrome (WNS) in North America. The decline of several WNS-susceptible bat populations led to the development of bat educational efforts to increase public support for bat conservation. However, few studies reviewed the efficacy of these efforts concerning the public’s understanding an...

With the accelerating pace of global change, it is imperative that we obtain rapid inventories of the status and distribution of wildlife for ecological inferences and conservation planning. To address this challenge, we launched the SNAPSHOT USA project, a collaborative survey of terrestrial wildlife populations using camera traps across the Unite...

Technology is transforming societies worldwide. A major innovation is the emergence of robotics and autonomous systems (RAS), which have the potential to revolutionize cities for both people and nature. Nonetheless, the opportunities and challenges associated with RAS for urban ecosystems have yet to be considered systematically. Here, we report th...

Technology is transforming societies worldwide. A major innovation is the emergence of robotics and autonomous systems (RAS), which have the potential to revolutionize cities for both people and nature. Nonetheless, the opportunities and challenges associated with RAS for urban ecosystems have yet to be considered systematically. Here, we report th...

Rapid urbanization and the global loss of biodiversity necessitate the development of a research agenda that addresses knowledge gaps in urban ecology that will inform policy, management, and conservation. To advance this goal, we present six topics to pursue in urban biodiversity research: the socioeconomic and social-ecological drivers of biodive...

Species richness of most taxa follows a latitudinal gradient, reflecting broad-scale interactions between climate and topography. Yet the mechanisms explaining regional patterns of biodiversity remain poorly understood because environmental variables that affect species distributions are difficult to isolate. We used data from the Kansas Herpetofau...

Student‐centered and inquiry‐based teaching improve science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning at all levels. However, reform efforts have been met with limited success due to complex interactions between structural relics of our education systems and the pre‐existing beliefs of STEM instructors. Using the Teacher‐Centered Sy...

Urban vacant lots are often a contentious feature in cities, seen as overgrown, messy eyesores that plague neighborhoods. We propose a shift in this perception to locations of urban potential, because vacant lots may serve as informal greenspaces that maximize urban biodiversity while satisfying residents’ preferences for their design and use. Our...

Urban vacant lots can vary considerably in their vegetation structure, from dense, shrubby habitats to wooded remnant fragments that may provide habitat for a variety of birds. By identifying which features promote diverse bird communities, we can determine at which scale management practices should focus and the necessary habitat structure and com...

Quantifying the impacts of agroforestry systems (AFS) on habitat conservation remains a challenge due to difficulties in accounting for differences in scales, AFS configurations, and inadequate measures of species dynamics within practical time frames. The field of soundscape ecology offers new perspectives and tools to efficiently collect informat...

Vacant lots are a common feature throughout many cities and may provide necessary habitat resources for urban bird populations. We evaluated the quality of vacant lots throughout Baltimore, Maryland, by determining how differences in vacant lot properties related to songbirds' nesting success and body condition. We observed 130 nests from American...

Our understanding of the evolution and function of animal displays has been advanced through studies of vocal performance. A widely used metric of vocal performance, vocal deviation, is limited by being applicable only to vocal trills, and also overlooks certain fine-scale aspects of song structure that might reflect vocal performance. In light of...

https://hdl.handle.net/10355/56212 Urban vacant lots are a ubiquitous feature in cities worldwide and quickly are becoming a topic of discussion regarding their ecological and social impacts. Vacant lots are typically viewed as discarded spaces within the city and locations for crime, trash, and overgrown vegetation. I suggest, however, that vacan...

Small urban greenspaces, such as neighborhood parks and private gardens, have often been overlooked or considered unlikely habitat sources owing to their small size, even though they may still provide important nesting and food resources for common songbirds. The objective of this study was to determine the role of small greenspaces, comprising a v...