Erin F. Abernethy

Oregon State University | OSU · Department of Integrative Biology

Floodplains of the southeastern United States exhibit high biological abundance and diversity, maintained by periodic inundation from seasonal flooding. To examine the relationship between invertebrate community composition and seasonal flooding following periods of drought, we quantified aquatic macroinvertebrate communities monthly in an inundate...

Humans have exaggerated natural habitat fragmentation, negatively impacting species dispersal and reducing population connectivity. Habitat fragmentation can be especially detrimental in freshwater populations, whose dispersal is already constrained by the river network structure. Aquatic insects, for instance, are generally limited to two primary...

Species assemblages often have a non‐random nested organization, which in vertebrate scavenger (carrion‐consuming) assemblages is thought to be driven by facilitation in competitive environments. However, not all scavenger species play the same role in maintaining assemblage structure, as some species are obligate scavengers (i.e., vultures) and ot...

Floodplains of the southeastern United States exhibit high biological productivity, maintained by periodic floodplain inundation as a result of seasonal flooding. To examine the relationship between biological productivity and seasonal flooding following periods of drought, we quantified aquatic macroinvertebrate communities monthly in an inundated...

River biodiversity is threatened globally by hydropower dams, and there is a need to understand how dam management favors certain species while filtering out others. We examined aquatic invertebrate communities within the tailwaters 0–24 km downstream of seven large hydropower dams in the Colorado River Basin of the western United States. We quanti...

The organization of ecological assemblages has important implications for ecosystem functioning, but little is known about how scavenger communities organize at the global scale. Here, we test four hypotheses on the factors affecting the network structure of terrestrial vertebrate scavenger assemblages and its implications on ecosystem functioning....

Energy production systems such as nuclear reactors and coal-burning power plants produce a multitude of waste contaminants including radionuclides, trace elements, and heavy metals. Among invertebrates, much of the effort to understand the impact of these contaminants has focused in aquatic environments, while relatively less attention has been on...

PDF of submitted version available for free at: http://publish.illinois.edu/maxallen/files/2019/06/Sebastian-Gonzalez-et-al.-MS.pdf Understanding the distribution of biodiversity across the Earth is one of the most challenging questions in biology. Much research has been directed at explaining the species latitudinal pattern showing that communi...

Scavenging is an influential ecosystem process, providing many weak, but stabilizing food web links. Amphibians and reptiles (i.e., herpetofauna) utilize land/water interfaces and can have large biomasses concentrated here, making them important vectors of nutrients between aquatic and terrestrial systems and a valuable resource to scavengers. Ther...

Carrion is a valuable nutrient resource used by a diversity of vertebrates across the globe. However, vertebrate scavenging ecology remains an understudied area of science, especially in regards to how biotic and abiotic factors influence scavenging community composition. Here we elucidate how fundamental biotic and abiotic factors interact to modu...

Invasive species have significantly affected ecosystems, particularly islands, and species invasions continue with increasing globalization. Largely unstudied, the influence of invasive species on island ecosystem functions, especially scavenging and decomposition, could be substantive. Quantifying carcass utilization by different scavengers and sh...

Background: Boiga irregularis is a widespread invasive species on Guam and has led to extirpation of most of the island's native avifauna. There are presently no microsatellite markers for this invasive species, hence we developed highly polymorphic microsatellite markers to allow for robust population genetic studies on Guam. Findings: We isola...

Worldwide, it has been estimated that invasive species have negative economic impacts in the billions of dollars, with impacts to island ecosystems being among the most devastating. While it is estimated that the most costly and destabilizing impacts are upon ecosystem functions, such impacts are difficult to quantify monetarily, and exact mechanis...

North America’s freshwater mussels are widely regarded as one of the most diverse and imperiled groups on earth, and many of the continent’s ~ 300 Unionidae and Margaratiferidae are drainage or regional endemics. Although Ligumia recta is currently widespread and stable in the Mississippi Basin, recent surveys suggest it is extirpated from the Pear...

Pages 21-28 Effect of small dams on freshwater mussel population genetics in two southeastern USA streams. Pages 29-40 Vertical migration and reproductive patterns of a long-term brooding freshwater mussel, Villosa constricta (Bivalvia: Unionidae) in a small Piedmont stream.