Marcus Lashley

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor (Associate) at University of Florida

Camera traps and radiotags commonly are used to estimate animal activity curves. However, little empirical evidence has been provided to validate whether they produce similar results. We compared activity curves from two common camera trapping techniques to those from radiotags with four species that varied substantially in size (~1 kg-~50 kg), die...

Giving-up density (GUD) experiments have been a foundational method to evaluate perceived predation risk, but rely on the assumption that food preferences are absolute, so that areas with higher GUDs can be interpreted as having higher risk. However, nutritional preferences are context dependent and can change with risk. We used spiders and grassho...

Anthropogenic sound is increasingly considered a major environmental issue, but its effects are relatively unstudied. Organisms may be directly affected by anthropogenic sound in many ways, including interference with their ability to detect mates, predators, or food, and disturbances that directly affect one organism may in turn have indirect effe...

Biological invasions often have contrasting consequences with reports of invasions decreasing diversity at small scales and facilitating diversity at large scales. Thus, previous literature has concluded that invasions have a fundamental spatial scale‐dependent relationship with diversity. Whether the scale‐dependent effects apply to vertebrate inv...

Motivation: SNAPSHOT USA is an annual, multicontributor camera trap survey of mammals across the United States. The growing SNAPSHOT USA dataset is intended for tracking the spatial and temporal responses of mammal populations to changes in land use, land cover and climate. These data will be useful for exploring the drivers of spatial and temporal...

Management of large herbivores often involves increasing availability of forages sufficient in nutrient density to allow animals to meet dietary demands. Nutritional carrying capacity (NCC) models commonly are used to compare plant communities and management strategies, but failure to use the most limiting nutrient could result in overestimating...

Morphometric variation of white‐tailed deer ( Odocoileus virginianus ; hereafter, deer) is caused by multiple environmental factors, including temperature, precipitation, soil quality, and forage availability. The effects of temperature and precipitation on plant growth are well documented, but it is unclear how soil mineral concentration affects d...

Motivation: SNAPSHOT USA is an annual, multicontributor camera trap survey of mammals across the United States. The growing SNAPSHOT USA dataset is intended for tracking the spatial and temporal responses of mammal populations to changes in land use, land cover and climate. These data will be useful for exploring the drivers of spatial and temporal...

We collected and screened black rats (Rattus rattus) in Key Largo, Florida, USA, to determine the potential role of disease or parasites in the collapse of the local population. Rats appeared healthy, but 94% (n¼15/16) tested positive for Sarcocystis sp. The partial 18S rRNA gene sequence was 98.7-99.7% similar to a strain of Sarcocystis zuoi that...

Negative interactions among invasive predators, competitors and native species can often disrupt ecosystem services, particularly when keystone species are affected. The Key Largo woodrat (Neotoma floridana smalli) is an endangered ecosystem engineer, endemic to protected hammocks on the northern third of the island of Key Largo, FL, USA. Invasive...

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...

Managers use morphometric data collected from harvested animals as indicators of nutritional condition. Antler or horn size often are considered in ungulates, but there are problems associated with biased and limited harvest data available from male animals in many populations. Adult female body mass also may be collected, but little information ex...

Oaks (Quercus spp.) provide an important food source for many wildlife species throughout the fall and winter. Most research evaluating oak masting patterns and the subsequent behavioral responses of wildlife focuses on the annual temporal scale. However, patterns in masting at the seasonal temporal scale may be important for wildlife behavior. We...

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...

Wildlife must adapt to human presence to survive in the Anthropocene, so it is critical to understand species responses to humans in different contexts. We used camera trapping as a lens to view mammal responses to changes in human activity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Across 163 species sampled in 102 projects around the world, changes in the amo...

Within the context of global change, seed dispersal research often focuses on changes in disperser communities (i.e., seed dispersers, such as birds, in an area) resulting from habitat fragmentation. This approach may not be completely illustrative due to certain seed disperser communities being more robust to fragmentation. Additionally, this top‐...

Mosquito-borne diseases represent a significant threat to human and animal health in the United States. Several viruses, including West Nile, Saint Louis encephalitis, and Eastern equine encephalitis are endemic. In humans, the disease is typically detected during the summer months, but not during the winter months. The ability of these viruses to...

Coyote (Canis latrans) are a generalist carnivore that are presumed to be a facultative scavenger. However, we observed feeding behavior that calls into question the simplicity of this interaction. During a carcass deployment experiment, we recorded 105 potential coyote feeding observations, of which 44 included information regarding the food item...

Anthropogenic climate change is contributing to an increase in the frequency of extreme weather events. These extreme events may affect interactions in mutualisms that provide key ecosystem functions, especially when the event is rare for a given system and participants are differentially affected. The tropical hardwood hammocks of Key Largo, Flori...

Mass mortality events (MMEs) of wildlife are increasingly frequent and may destabilize communities. MMEs provide a unique ecological context because they simultaneously produce a resource pulse that is sometimes coupled with the loss or severe impairment of functional roles such as predation or herbivory. Moreover, these effects are complicated by...

We call for journals to commit to requiring open data be archived in a format that will be simple and clear for readers to understand and use. If applied consistently, these requirements will allow contributors to be acknowledged for their work through citation of open data, and facilitate scientific progress.

Wild pigs (Sus scrofa) are invading many areas globally and impacting biodiversity and economies in their non-native range. Thus, wild pigs are often targeted for eradication efforts. Age- and sex-specific body measurements are important for informing these eradication efforts because they reflect body condition, resource availability, and fecundit...

Animals moving through landscapes need to strike a balance between finding sufficient resources to grow and reproduce while minimizing encounters with predators. Because encounter rates are determined by the average distance over which directed motion persists, this trade-off should be apparent in individuals’ movement. Using GPS data from 1,396 in...

Activity patterns are an important behavioral trait linked to animal interactions within food webs. Biological invasions can have impacts on the behavior of native species through predation and competition, but few studies have determined if invasions lead to shifts in activity patterns of native species. Wild pigs (Sus scrofa) are a generalist, in...

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...

Conceptual gaps and imprecise terms and definitions may obscure the breadth of plant–animal dispersal relationships involved in directed dispersal. The term ‘directed’ indicates predictable delivery to favourable microsites. However, directed dispersal was initially considered uncommon in diffuse mutualisms (i.e. those involving many species), part...

A pervasive but understudied global change is occurring in the Anthropocene. Wildlife mass mortality events (MMEs) are increasing in frequency causing the abrupt entry of unusually large amounts of carrion into ecosystems, while most vertebrate obligate scavenger species are declining. We hypothesized that behavioral plasticity could still allow ob...

Natural habitats have been converted to urban areas across the globe such that many landscapes now represent matrices of developed and protected lands. As urbanization continues to expand, associated pressures on wildlife will increase, including effects on animals in adjacent protected habitats. For prey species (e.g., ungulates), an understanding...

Prescribed fire has been encouraged as a management tool to increase oak regeneration across the southeastern United States. The least utilized part of the burn window in this region is during fall, but burning in this season with the objective of oak regeneration has been discouraged because of the potential negative consequences on subsequent ger...

Because ungulates are important contributors to ecosystem function, understanding the "ecology of fear" could be important to the conservation of ecosystems. Although studying ungulate ecology of fear is common, knowledge from ungulate systems is highly contested among ecologists. Here, we review the available literature on the ecology of fear in u...

Trophic mismatches are commonly reported across a wide array of taxa and can have important implications for species participating in the interaction. However, to date, examples of trophic mismatch have centrally focused on those induced by shifts in climate. Here we report on the potential for humans to induce trophic mismatch by shifting the phen...

Environmental management often requires making decisions despite system uncertainty. One such example is mudflat mediation in flood control reservoirs. Reservoir mudflats limit development of diverse fish assemblages due to the lack of structural habitat provided by plants. Seeding mudflats with agricultural plants may mimic floodplain wetlands onc...

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...

Shallow areas of drawdown reservoirs are often devoid of adequate fish habitat due to degradation associated with unnatural and relatively invariable cycles of exposure and flooding. One method of enhancing fish habitat in these areas is to sow exposed shorelines with agricultural plants to provide structure once flooded. It remains unclear if some...

Forests typically have limited high quality nutrition available to meet the seasonal needs of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) during summer. Prescribed fire is used to enhance deer habitat in pyric-disclimax communities but is normally applied during the dormant season. Historically, lightning-ignited fires in pine systems occurred durin...

The list of cool-season forage recommendations for wildlife in this publication includes varieties that have been tested and are known to perform well in Florida. Written by M. Wallau, A. R. Blount, J. M. Campos-Krauer, M. A. Lashley, E. Rios, J. M. B. Vendramini, J. C. B. Dubeux, Md. A. Babar, C. L. Mackowiak, and K. H. Quesenberry, and published...

The role of fire in the eastern broadleaf and Appalachian forest regions, until recently, was poorly understood or minimally examined, as this region was long overlooked as a flammable landscape and fire was seen primarily as a threat to the timber resource and wildlife. In the past few decades, a significant body of research has enhanced our under...

Mast seeding is a resource pulse that is thought to be a strategy in plants to satiate obligate seed predators. Behavioral responses of facultative consumers receive less attention in mast seeding studies despite evidence that they may be more important to community-level indirect effects. We designed an acorn addition experiment to test the hypoth...

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...

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article.

Traditional forms of higher learning include teaching in the classroom on college campuses and in‐person adult‐focused public outreach events for non‐students. Online college degree programs and public outreach platforms have been steadily emerging, and the COVID‐19 pandemic has, at least temporarily, forced all related ecology and evolutionary bio...

Questions While much is known about the impact of tree encroachment on flammability in degraded pine woodlands, little is known about how encroachment is impacting other important ecosystem functions. We investigated how the availability of seed from four encroaching tree species and the presence of a midstorey and litter layer affect seed predator...

Many ungulates are spotted as neonates. This trait is unique to individuals, making their identification feasible from remote cameras. Key deer (Odocoileus virginianus clavium) are an endangered subspecies of white-tailed deer endemic to the lower Florida Keys, U.S.A. Habitat loss and hunting were historical drivers of population decline but recent...

In historically open-canopied and fire-dependent upland oak (Quercus spp.) forests of the central and eastern United States, fire exclusion is contributing to an increase in competing non-oak tree species that are often shade-tolerant and fire-sensitive. As these non-oak species encroach and oak abundance declines, forests are becoming denser and w...

Pyrophytic oak landscapes across the central and eastern United States are losing dominance as shade-tolerant, fire-sensitive, or opportunistic tree species encroach into these ecosystems in the absence of periodic, low-intensity surface fires. Mesophication, a hypothesized process initiated by intentional fire exclusion by which these encroaching...

The idea that not all fire regimes are created equal is a central theme in fire research and conservation. Fire frequency ( i.e., temporal scale) is likely the most studied fire regime attribute as it relates to conservation of fire-adapted ecosystems. Generally, research converges on fire frequency as the primary filter in plant community assembly...

Field‐based course work has been foundational to Ecology and Evolutionary Biology curricula. However, opportunities for these experiences gradually have decreased over the past few decades and are being replaced with technology in the college learning environment. The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic facilitated a rapid transition of all field‐bas...

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic introduced an abrupt change in human behavior globally. Here, we discuss unique insights the pandemic has provided into the eco‐evolutionary role of pathogens in ecosystems and present data that indicates the pandemic may have fundamentally changed our learning choices. COVID‐19 has indirectly affect...

Background Each death event can be characterized by its associated microbes – a living community of bacteria composed of carcass, soil, and insect-introduced bacterial species – a necrobiome. With the possibility for close succession of these death events, it may be beneficial to characterize how the magnitude of an initial death event may impact t...

Degree of reproductive synchronization in prey is hypothesized as a predator defense strategy reducing prey risk via predator satiation or predator avoidance. Species with precocial young, especially those exposed to specialist predators, should be highly synchronous to satiate predators (predator satiation hypothesis), while prey with nonprecocial...

Nonconsumptive effects of predators potentially have negative fitness consequences on prey species through changes in prey behavior. Coyotes (Canis latrans) recently expanded into the eastern United States, and raccoons (Procyon lotor) are a common mesocarnivore that potentially serve as competitors and food for coyotes. We used camera traps at bai...

Herbivores must navigate a heterogeneous matrix of nutrients in plant communities to meet physiological requirements. Given that the only difference between an essential nutrient and a toxin is the concentration in the herbivores diet, heterogeneity of nutrient concentrations in plant communities likely force wild herbivores to balance intake of ab...

Restoration of the longleaf pine ecosystem is a conservation priority throughout the southeastern United States, but the role of hardwoods in providing food and cover for wildlife within this system is poorly understood. We investigated white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) movement and habitat selection relative to overstory hardwood distribu...

Gastrointestinal tracts were obtained from 120 raccoons (Procyon lotor) on properties in the state of Mississippi, USA, with and without wildlife baiting to observe the effects of baiting on parasite prevalence and intensity. Raccoons from baited properties had higher prevalence of Gnathostoma procyonis and higher intensities of Physaloptera rara a...

Winter drawdowns in flood control reservoirs create expansive mudflats that lack the vegetation typical of littoral zones, which reduces the amount of structure available for fish habitat. This study investigated the feasibility of establishing agricultural plantings as a management action to ameliorate mudflats by providing structural cover follow...

https://vimeo.com/504905933

Fire plays an important role in plant community structure in many terrestrial ecosystems. However, most studies assume responses of plant communities to fire are primarily generated by direct effects. That is, studies often assume the net effects of fire on plant communities are primarily driven by fire consuming existing plant biomass, resetting s...

Habitat quality is often evaluated based on food availability. However, ecological theory suggests cover should be a more important decision rule when food is not a proximate threat to fitness, as cover mediates predation risk as well as other important factors of fitness. In reality, vegetation characteristics related to food availability and cove...

The eradication and subsequent reintroduction of grey wolves (Canis lupus) in the western United States has provided unique insights on the role these predators play in regulating ecosystem functioning and dynamics. While the importance of wolves in ecosystems has been recognized for nearly a century, recent work has reported ecological interaction...

In shallow reservoirs, seasonal water drawdowns expose littoral areas and over time produce barren mudflats. When flooded, mudflats provide homogeneous substrates, turbid water, and eroding shorelines of limited ecological value. We hypothesized that in mudflats structurally complex habitats are occupied by more fish, smaller fish of a larger range...

The artificial water regimes of flood control reservoirs limit vegetation establishment in littoral zones and produce mudflats with limited habitat for juvenile fishes. One strategy to enhance habitat on mudflats is to sow cool‐season plants to provide submerged structure when inundated. However, how the structure of these plants persists following...

Weather has been recognized as a density independent factor influencing the abundance, distribution, and behavior of vertebrates. Male wild turkeys’ (Meleagris gallopavo) breeding behavior includes vocalizations and courtship displays to attract females, the phenology of which can vary with latitude. State biologists design spring turkey-hunting se...

Forest management practices that influence mast production in oaks (Quercus spp.) are ecologically and economically important for regeneration of future oak forests, timber products, and wildlife that consume acorns. We conducted a 10-year experiment in upland oak-hickory forests of eastern Tennessee to determine the influence of canopy release, fe...

The biotic resistance hypothesis (BRH) was proposed to explain why intermediate disturbances lead to greater resistance to non-native invasions proposing communities that are more diverse provide greater resistance. However, several empirical data sets have rejected the BRH because native and non-native species richness often have a positive relati...

Prescribed fire is used to restore and maintain fire-dependent forest communities. Because fire affects food and cover resources, fire-mediated resource selection has been documented for many wildlife species. The first step in understanding these interactions is to understand resource selection of the predators in a fire-maintained system. We atta...

Carrion has well-documented effects on ecosystem processes, but how those effects change with increasing biomass, particularly with extreme amounts of carrion occurring during mass mortality events, is relatively unstudied. Traditional food web theory predicts basal resource availability is linked to bottom-up effects, which may support higher prim...

Few attempts have been made to determine how soil productivity influences diet selection in herbivores, likely because environmental characteristics known to influence diet selection such as plant community structure and herbivore nutritional demands are often confounded with changes in soil productivity. We designed a soil-amendment experiment to...

Night-time roosting in Meleagris gallopavo (Wild Turkey) is a quotidian activity that minimizes vulnerability to predators and weather. Roost-site selection in managed Pinus palustris (Longleaf Pine) communities is poorly documented. We assessed roost-site selection by comparing use and availability of vegetation types at the individual female Wild...

Mass mortality events (MMEs) are defined as a significant number of individuals dying within a given location and time, leading to significantly higher inputs of nutrients into an environment. The magnitude and frequency of these events have been increasing across taxonomic groups, causing high interest in recent years. However, lack of studies on...

An apparent courtship was observed for about 10 min. at 1830 h MST on 6 August 2017. The interaction took place in a small seepage pool (about 2 m diameter, <10 cm deep) with a large, overhanging, flat rock at the upstream end. The pool was about30 m NE of an unnamed, ephemeral stream, 27 km NW of New Meadows, Adams County, Idaho, USA (45.18710°N,...

Article Link for Free Copy: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1VoMe1L~GwCqhZ. Frequent fire-return intervals (<3-yr) have been suggested to optimize the benefits of prescribed fire in many fire-dominated ecosystems. There are several potential ecological benefits to frequent fires, such as suppression of encroaching fire-intolerant plant species, inc...

The article, “Setting an evolutionary trap: could the hider strategy be maladaptive for white-tailed deer?”, written by M. Colter Chitwood, Marcus A. Lashley, Christopher E. Moorman and Christopher S. DePerno, was originally published Online First without open access. © 2017 Japan Ethological Society and Springer Japan KK, part of Springer Nature

Mass mortality events are characterized by rapid die-offs of many individuals within a population at a specific location. These events produce a high concentration of remains within a given locale and the frequency and magnitude of these events may be increasing (Fey et al. 2015). Mass mortality events may be caused by physical (e.g., lightning str...

Seedling survival and growth in eastern white pines (Pinus strobus) may be limited by white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) browsing. However, most studies have occurred in areas central to the white pine range, making other factors such as seedling microenvironment unimportant. If microenvironment becomes a concern near the edge of the white...

Scale is important in understanding and applying concepts in ecology. Historically, the mechanisms regulating necrophagous arthropod community structure have been well explored on a single vertebrate carcass. However, practically nothing is known of whether such findings can be extrapolated to cases where large numbers of carcasses have been introd...

The eastern phoebe (Sayornis phoebe) is an insectivorous bird that sometimes consumes ectoparasites. Previous accounts indicate that phoebes may indirectly benefit mammals by consuming parasites found in vegetation reducing the probability of tick encounters. As part of an experiment quantifying community-level vertebrate interactions relative to p...

Fire is an important disturbance worldwide, and literature supports the use of prescribed fire to restore and maintain fire-dependent ecosystems. However, fire could alter the abundance and persistence of some arthropods, in turn influencing vertebrate taxa that depend on those arthropods as a food source. We used replicated prescribed fire treatme...

An evolutionary trap occurs when an organism makes a formerly adaptive decision that now results in a maladaptive outcome. Such traps can be induced by anthropogenic environmental changes, with nonnative species introductions being a leading cause. The recent establishment of coyotes (Canis latrans) into the southeastern USA has the potential to ch...

The float test is the most widely used method to discriminate between viable and nonviable acorns. It provides an objective, simple, rapid, and inexpensive test to inform experiments and management strategies dependent on quantification of viable acorns. However, the accuracy of the float-test method is understudied. To test the accuracy of the flo...

Nearly all species of sexually dimorphic ungulates sexually segregate. Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain this phenomenon, including the social-factors hypothesis (SFH) and the predation hypothesis (PH). Interestingly, previous studies have accepted and rejected each hypothesis within and across species but few studies have simultaneo...

Camera surveys commonly are used by managers and hunters to estimate white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus density and demographic rates. Though studies have documented biases and inaccuracies in the camera survey methodology, camera traps remain popular due to ease of use, cost-effectiveness, and ability to survey large areas. Because recruitme...

A recent study of Sitka black-tailed deer Odocoileus hemionus sitkensis demonstrated that opportunistic fawn capture yielded left-truncated data and ultimately resulted in overestimating fawn survival and spurious ecological model inference compared to neonates captured via vaginal implant transmitters (VITs). Given the ecological and economic valu...