Jonathan PlissnerU.S. Fish and Wildlife Service · National Wildlife Refuge System
Jonathan Plissner
Doctor of Philosophy
About
33
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Citations since 2017
Publications
Publications (33)
Invasive mice ( Mus spp.) can negatively impact island species and ecosystems. Because fewer island rodent eradications have been attempted for mice compared to rats ( Rattus spp.), less is known about efficacy and palatability of rodenticide baits for mouse eradications. We performed a series of bait acceptance and efficacy cage trials using a sta...
Invertebrates are key to island ecosystems but impacts from invasive mammalian predators are not well documented or understood. Given this knowledge gap, we studied terrestrial arthropod communities in the presence of a common invasive rodent (house mice, Mus musculus) on a subtropical atoll—Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge (MANWR). Here, inva...
Eleven years after invasive Norway rats ( Rattus norvegicus ) were eradicated from Hawadax Island, in the Aleutian Islands, Alaska, the predicted three-level trophic cascade in the rocky intertidal, with native shorebirds as the apex predator, returned, leading to a community resembling those on rat-free islands with significant decreases in invert...
P. pryeri is an easily identifiable species that could potentially be released with the eradication of house mice on MANWR. Although P. pryeri is currently not known from the Main Hawaiian Islands, it would likely become a pest if established there. As noted by Forest and Kim Starr, P. pryeri is one of the most conspicuous and ambiguous insects on...
Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge is the world's largest albatross colony and provides globally significant breeding grounds for over 20 species totaling more than 3 million birds. However, since 2015, invasive house mice have attacked and depredated hundreds of adult breeding albatross. Efforts are underway to eradicate mice from Midway in the...
Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge (MANWR) is the world's largest albatross colony and provides globally significant breeding grounds for over 20 avian species totaling more than 3 million birds. Since 2015, invasive house mice (Mus musculus) have attacked and depredated hundreds of nesting adult albatross. Mouse eradication on MANWR is planned...
Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge is the world's largest albatross colony and provides
globally significant breeding grounds for over 20 species totaling more than 3 million birds. However, since 2015, invasive house mice have attacked and depredated hundreds of adult breeding albatross. Efforts are underway to eradicate mice from Midway in th...
Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge is the world's largest albatross colony and provides globally significant breeding grounds for over 20 species totaling more than 3 million birds. However, since 2015, invasive house mice have attacked and depredated hundreds of adult breeding albatross. Efforts are underway to eradicate mice from Midway in the...
Birds and bats have become important factors in the siting and permitting of wind‐energy
facilities. Identifying methods to avoid, minimize, and mitigate bird and bat fatalities should help streamline wind energy permitting and reduce potential impacts to bird and bat resources. In this study, the authors conducted nighttime surveys to investigate...
Wetlands in the western Great Basin of the United States are patchily distributed and undergo extensive seasonal and annual variation in water levels. The American Avocet (Recurvirostra americana) is one of many shorebird species that use these wetlands as breeding and migratory stopover sites and must adjust to variable conditions. We used radio t...
Characteristics of nocturnal bird migration are poorly understood for many regions of the United States. This information will be critical in areas where wind power projects are proposed. We used portable marine radar to conduct a nocturnal bird migration study at multiple sites along the Allegheny Front, West Virginia, on 45 nights during autumn 2...
Wetland conservation efforts require knowledge of space use by a diversity of waterbirds. However, determining space use of animals requires intensive monitoring of individual organisms. Often, activity patterns during much of the annual cycle are neglected in analyses of home range and habitat use. From 1995-97, we monitored space use in a populat...
Wetlands in the western Great Basin of the United States are patchily distributed and undergo extensive seasonal and annual variation in water levels. The American Avocet (Recurvirostra americana) is one of many shorebird species that use these wetlands as breeding and migratory stopover sites and must adjust to variable conditions. We used radio t...
Methods for monitoring progress toward recovery goals are highly variable and may be problematic for endangered species that are mobile and widely distributed. Recovery objectives for Piping Plovers (Charadrius melodus) include attainment of minimum population sizes within specified recovery units, as determined by two U.S. and two Canadian recover...
The metapopulation viability analysis package, vortex, was used to examine viability and recovery objectives for piping plovers Charadrius melodus, an endangered shorebird that breeds in three distinct regions of North America. Baseline models indicate that while Atlantic Coast populations, under current management practices, are at little risk of...
Connectivity of discrete habitat patches may be described in terms of the movements of individual organisms among such patches. To examine connectivity of widely dispersed alkali lake systems, we recorded postbreeding and subsequent breeding locations of color-banded American Avocets (Recurvirostra americana) in the western U.S. Great Basin, from 1...
One hypothesis to explain both within-and between-season breeding dispersal is that individuals move in response to degradation in the suitability and/or quality of their nesting sites. This hypothesis was experimentally examined by manipulating the suitability and/or quality of nesting boxes used by Eastern Bluebirds (Sialia sialis) on one study s...
Most hypotheses explain dispersal patterns in vertebrate populations based upon an assumption that individuals incur costs when moving away from their natal territories. The geometric distribution of dispersal distances that typically reflects observed dispersal, however, may also be modelled from the basic structure and demographic parameters of t...
We examined the genetic relationship among putative parents, offspring, and helpers in 224 red-cock-aded woodpeckers (Picoides borealis) from the Sandhills of North Carolina. Comparison of DNA similarity with a pedigree constructed from 3,823 individually-marked birds observed from 1979 to 1992 provided verification of observed relatedness in the s...
We examined the genetic relationship among putative parents, offspring, and helpers in 224 red-cock-aded woodpeckers (Picoides borealis) from the Sandhills of North Carolina. Comparison of DNA similarity with a pedigree constructed from 3,823 individually-marked birds observed from 1979 to 1992 provided verification of observed relatedness in the s...
Assessing status and recovery of the endangered Piping Plover (Charadrius melodus) requires knowledge of the species' current distribution and abundance throughout the annual cycle. To address this issue, over 1,000 biologists and volunteers from 10 nations collaborated in the 1991 International Piping Plover Census. Approximately 2,099 sites were...
Many vertebrate populations exhibit large variation in natal dispersal distances. Murray (1967) showed by simulation that this variation need not have a genetic basis, but could result from two factors, chance variation in proximity to suitable sites, and competition with sibs and neighbors for those sites. Waser (1985) developed an analytic model...
Uncertain paternity through the potential for extra-pair copulations by females selects for the behaviour of male eastern bluebirds. Males are with fertile females more than non-fertile females; they stay closer to and follow fertile females more than non-fertile females. Reproductive competition through conspecific nest parasitism also occurs in e...
Male American robin behave in ways consistent with the protection of paternity hypothesis. During nest building and egg laying, when females are fertilizable, males are with females significantly more often than they are during incubation when females are assumed to be nonfertilizable. Males are significantly closer to females and follow them signi...
Projects
Projects (2)
Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge (MANWR) is the world’s largest albatross colony and provides globally significant breeding grounds for more than 3 million birds from 20 different species. Located within the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, Midway appears to be a safe haven. However, since 2015, invasive house mice have attacked and predated hundreds of adult breeding albatross. Beyond direct mortality of albatross, mice likely indirectly affect a range of other organisms both above and below ground, ultimately resulting in extensive changes in island ecosystem functions and resilience. Efforts are underway to eradicate mice from Midway in 2019 but a critical uncertainty remains regarding island ecosystem response to such a conservation intervention. This eradication presents a unique opportunity to design and implement a pre- and post-control study to understand the comprehensive influence of mice on islands and develop methods that restore ecological functioning. Working collaboratively with eradication practitioners and USFWS, we will employ novel eDNA metabarcoding and stable isotope analyses to ascertain mouse diet on Midway and consequently use those data to guide ecological monitoring to determine the impacts of mice before and after eradication. Through this project, we will develop new methods for mouse diet analysis that will feed into a predictive framework that identifies the potential ecological effects of mouse eradications and guide future, successful island restoration efforts.
