About
43
Publications
7,499
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
104
Citations
Citations since 2017
Introduction
My research lab aims to understand the drivers and consequences of body size change to improve sustainability for large ruminants (bison, cattle, etc.) on working and public lands in a changing world. We study bison (Bison bison) body size change using integrated methods of vertebrate paleontology, thermal biology (thermography), and ecology to inform management and to connect people with nature. Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=fAt4ZhcAAAAJ.
Additional affiliations
October 2020 - present
September 2020 - August 2021
July 2016 - August 2020
Education
August 2016 - August 2020
August 2012 - May 2014
August 2011 - May 2012
Publications
Publications (43)
The relationship between body size and temperature of mammals is poorly resolved, especially for large keystone species such as bison (Bison bison). Bison are well represented in the fossil record across North America, which provides an opportunity to relate body size to climate within a species. We measured the length of a leg bone (calcaneal tube...
Bison (Bison bison) are a keystone of a conservation system, but that system is vulnerable to the effects of a changing climate projected to alter land use through the 21st century. The current bison population of North America is approximately 400,000 animals and is maintained by a self‐assembled bison management system (BMS) of various stakeholde...
Future climate projections of warming, drying, and increased weather variability indicate that conventional agricultural and production practices within the Northern Great Plains (NGP) will become less sustainable, both ecologically and economically. As a result, the livelihoods of people that rely on these lands will be adversely impacted. This is...
Unseasonably early blizzards in the northern Great Plains threaten large mammal populations unacclimated for variable and extreme winter conditions. This region averaged 22 blizzards per winter season during the 2010s, up from 6 during the 1960s, and is anticipated to average 32 blizzards by the 2050s. In early October 2013, the fatal Atlas Blizzar...
Fossils of Bison (bison) are scarce on the Colorado Plateau, especially in and around the Greater
Grand Canyon Region. Because of poor preservation and collection biases in the region, various resource
managers have erroneously designated bison a nonnative and human-(re)introduced species. This decision
directly impacts an extant herd of approximat...
Ecosystem function relies in part on aligned relationships between functional traits of animals and the environments in which they live. Studies of trait-environment relationships have largely focused on communities of native species, but domestic and non-native species also play a role in the functioning of modern ecosystems. We use ecometrics, or...
Summary article for bison managers of "Integrated evidence-based extent of occurrence or North American bison since 1500 CE and before".
Several quantitative diagnostic techniques are available to estimate gastrointestinal parasite counts in the feces of ruminants. Comparing egg and oocyst magnitudes in naturally infected samples has been a recommended approach to rank fecal techniques. In this study, we compared the Mini-FLOTAC (sensitivity of 5 eggs per gram (EPG)/oocysts per gram...
Most of us are familiar with the childhood story of Goldilocks and the three bears, where the little girl tries to find the bed that wasn't too hard, nor too soft, but “just right.” This concept can be applied to many facets of life and business. For livestock, discussions and evaluation of body size, carcass weight, and dressing percentage come up...
Bison (Bison bison) restoration has profound implications for ecological, economic and cultural domains, especially restoration into their former historic ranges. Climate change and climate variability, however, threaten sustainable restoration progress. The historic range of bison centered on the prairies of the Great Plains but spanned from Alask...
Currently, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) considers bison (Bison bison) a non-amenable, “exotic” species. This designation has been applied because bison were first considered a native wildlife game species under states’ laws (i.e. public trust doctrine circa 1700s) and most wildlife laws pre-date agricultural laws (see Geer vs. Connecti...
We reassess the historic maximum extent of where bison once naturally roamed during or near the arrival of colonial explorers to this continent. In a first demonstration of a multidisciplinary meta-analysis for a species’ extent of occurrence, we combined evidence from paleontology (fossils), archaeology (Indigenous and cultural use associated with...
Following the near extinction of bison (Bison bison) from its historic range across North America in late 19th century, novel bison conservation efforts in the early 20th century catalyzed a popular widespread conservation movement to protect and restore bison among other species and places. Since Allen’s initial delineation (1876) of the historic...
We evaluated 200 carcasses and meat samples produced from two common bison finishing systems to characterize the influence of diet on key product attributes and to gain insight into consumer preferences for bison meat. Collectively these data indicate that finishing system impacts composition of bison carcasses, nutrient profile of bison meat, and...
We have prepared a standardized format of the USDA Agricultural Census Data of bison that are available by county and by State.
Data available here: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/6cc9ee1b777447128d811238babfe1ed
North American bison (Bison bison) are an attractive, high-value livestock species that is growing in number and popularity across the United States. While bison ranching has some similarities with cattle ranching, there are significant differences that must be accounted for to ensure long-term sustainability and profitability. Bison are a hardy sp...
The bison market has been a vital part of the sustained production and conservation of the species. The bison market has largely been dependent on slaughtered bison meat prices since the 1960s. The primary reporting service for bison market data is the U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Marketing Service (USDA AMS) office, providing monthl...
Peer writing groups serve an important role in providing a venue to improve written productivity, provide support, and brainstorm research ideas. Peer accountability assists with focusing attention on tasks at hand, which often receive less attention due to the demands on agent’s and researcher's time. Establishing dedicated meeting times to priori...
A paleontological deposit near San Clemente de Térapa represents one of the very few Rancholabrean North American Land Mammal Age sites within Sonora, Mexico. During that time, grasslands were common, and the climate included cooler and drier summers and wetter winters than currently experienced in northern Mexico. Here, we demonstrate restructurin...
The bison market has been a vital part of the sustained production and conservation of the species. This same market has been largely dependent on slaughtered bison meat prices since the 1960s. The primary reporting service for bison market data is the U.S. Department of Agriculture- Agricultural Marketing Service (USDA AMS) office, providing onlin...
We used an infrared thermal imaging camera to measure body surface temperature (ºC) and heat transfer (total surface Watts and Watts/m2) between bison and their environment across 19 herds from Saskatchewan, Canada to Texas, USA, in both the summer of 2017 and the winter of 2017–2018, a total driving trip of nearly 19,000 miles. We focused on femal...
Aim
Mammals on islands often undergo remarkable evolutionary changes. The acquisition of ‘low gear’ locomotion, namely short and robust limb elements, has been typically associated with the island syndrome in large mammals and, especially, ruminants. Here we provide an investigative framework to examine biotic and abiotic selective factors hypothes...
Body size of bison (Bison bison) declines with rising global temperature across the fossil record and rising annual temperatures across the Great Plains, but what are the underlying drivers? Body size depends on growth, which depends on maximizing net energy and nutrient flows for the production of tissues at seasonal scales across the range of the...
Body size of animals is plastic and dependent on environmental conditions that are changing globally. In this dissertation, I explore environmental traits as they relate to and drive body size change of North American bison (Bison bison) along the Great Plains. I examined 1) 40,000 years of body size change in the fossil record, 2) five decades of...
Large grazers are visible and valuable indicators of the effects of projected changes in temperature and drought on grasslands. The grasslands of the Great Plains have supported the greatest number of bison (Bison bison; Linnaeus, 1758) since prehistoric times. We tested the hypothesis that body mass (BM, kg) and asymptotic body mass (ABM, kg) of B...
This is a stakeholder synopsis of our peer-reviewed article, "Decadal heat and drought drive body size of North American bison (Bison bison) along the Great Plains" in Ecology and Evolution.
A layman's overview of conservation paleontology, written for bison managers and ranchers across North America.
A layman's overview of the recent article by Martin, Mead, and Barboza (2018) about fossil bison body size and its relationship to climatic change over the past 40,000 years in North America and its implications for bison management and conservation.
Fossils of Bison (bison) are scarce on the Colorado Plateau, especially in and around the Greater Grand Canyon Region. Because of poor preservation and collection biases in the region, various resource managers have erroneously designated bison a nonnative and human-(re)introduced species. This decision directly impacts an extant herd of approximat...
Bison spp. (bison) fossils are scarce on the Colorado Plateau, especially within and adjacent to the greater Grand Canyon region. Because of the poor fossil record for the bison on the Colorado Plateau and in Grand Canyon National Park, various resource managers have surreptitiously designated bison a non-native and human-introduced species to the...
A layman's overview of the recently published discovery of the "Higgs Bison" in Eurasia and its implications on bison management and conservation.
Influence on the body size of Bison has been forced prehistorically by climate, and historically by anthropogenic selection for breeding. Specifically, bison body size appears to be diminishing due to increasing temperatures and/or abrupt climate change. High resolution relative temperature changes occur within centuries and decades in many cases,...
Bison spp. (bison) fossils are scarce on the Colorado Plateau, especially within and adjacent to the greater Grand Canyon region. Because of the poor fossil record for the bison on the Colorado Plateau and in Grand Canyon National Park, various resource managers have surreptitiously designated bison a non-native and human-introduced species to the...
Bison spp. (bison) fossils are scarce on the Colorado Plateau, especially within the greater Grand
Canyon region. Because of the poor fossil record for bison on the plateau and in Grand Canyon
National Park, various resource managers have surreptitiously designated bison a nonnative and
human-introduced species. The lack of evidence for bison seems...
The Cucaracha Formation (early Miocene, 18.8 Ma (B. MacFadden, pers. comm., Oct. 2012) of the Panama Canal Basin preserves a rare record of terrestrial neotropical paleoenvironments and is important in understanding the history of biotic interchange between North and South America in the geologic past. We describe a new assemblage of freshwater mol...
LaGarry, H. E., M. B. Leite, W. B. Wells, J. Martin, & A. Malchow. 2008. Dirty Creek trackways: a new vertebrate trackway site from the Oglala National Grassland in northwestern Nebraska. Proceedings of the 118th Annual Meeting of the Nebraska Academy of Sciences, p. 65.
Based on 1991-2006 detailed 1:24,000 geologic mapping and pedestrian surveys...
Projects
Projects (6)
Re-evaluating the distribution of bison prior to their population collapse in 1882 is critical for informing restoration projects and understanding the extent of ecological and evolutionary interactions bison had with their diverse habitats. We will integrate various data streams from the disciplines of historical ecology, archaeology, and paleontology to assemble a comprehensive dataframe.
This project is specifically designed to provide actionable resources for bison managers and extension agents. Resources will be initially posted here: https://extension.sdstate.edu/tags/bison.
Describing the patterns and trends of fossil and modern North American bison in relation to changing climates and environments. This is based on fossil trends and physiological principles of thermal biology and ecological nutrition. Aim: to identify which driver is larger and what are the implications for the management of a North American keystone species.
