Rachel A. Short

South Dakota State University | SDSU · Department of Natural Resource Management

Today’s livestock producers face increasing public scrutiny because animal agriculture is often cited as a major contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, this negative perception does not take into account the carbon (C) sequestration benefits of grazing livestock nor that grazing lands account for 25% of the global soil sequestratio...

Mammalian megafauna have been critical to the functioning of Earth’s biosphere for millions of years. However, since the Plio-Pleistocene, their biodiversity has declined, concurrent with dramatic environmental change and hominin evolution. While these biodiversity declines are well-documented, their impacts on the ecological function of megafaunal...

Mammalian megafauna have been critical to the functioning of Earth’s biosphere for millions of years. However, since the Plio-Pleistocene, their biodiversity has declined concurrently with dramatic environmental change and hominin evolution. While these biodiversity declines are well-documented, their implications for the ecological function of meg...

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...

Microfauna communities resulting from packrat accumulation provide crucial information about how natural communities respond to environmental changes. However, fossil accumulation mechanisms can be complex, making it difficult to interpret these community responses. Natural Trap Cave (NTC) is an open-mouth cave with an 85-foot drop that often lies...

Mammalian megafauna have been critical to the functioning of Earth’s biosphere for millions of years. However, since the Plio-Pleistocene, their biodiversity has declined, concurrent with dramatic environmental change and hominin evolution. While these biodiversity declines are well-documented, their impacts on the ecological function of megafaunal...

We are in a modern biodiversity crisis that will restructure community compositions and ecological functions globally. Large mammals, important contributors to ecosystem function, have been affected directly by purposeful extermination and indirectly by climate and land-use changes, yet functional turnover is rarely assessed on a global scale using...

Mammalian megafauna have been critical to the functioning of Earth’s biosphere for millions of years. However, since the Plio-Pleistocene, their biodiversity has declined, concurrent with dramatic environmental change and hominin evolution. While these biodiversity declines are well-documented, their impacts on the ecological function of megafaunal...

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...

An understanding of science concepts is important for living in modern society. Supporting adults’ science learning can be particularly challenging because most adults no longer attend formal educational institutions where access and opportunities are facilitated by teachers and school-sponsored programs. Biological field stations (BFSs) are a newl...

Aim We investigate locomotor function in artiodactyls, represented by calcaneal gear ratio, as it relates to multiple environments. Using an ecometric approach, we develop a trait–environment model to investigate ecosystem‐level changes through time and to reconstruct past environments. We apply the trait–environment model to a case study of six si...

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...

Biological field stations (BFSs) are well positioned through their informal STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education programs to improve levels of science literacy and support environmental sustainability. A survey of 223 US BFSs revealed that their outreach programs strive to promote conservation and environmental steward...

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...

• Ecometrics is the study of community‐level functional trait–environment relationships. We use ecometric analyses to estimate paleoenvironment and to investigate community‐level functional changes through time. • We evaluate four methods that have been used or have the potential to be used in ecometric analyses for estimating paleoenvironment to d...

Informal learning institutions (ILIs) create opportunities to increase public understanding of science and promote increased inclusion of groups underrepresented in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) careers but are not equally distributed across the United States. We explore geographic gaps in the ILI landscape and identify three gr...

Active teachers noted persistent problems in their classrooms, including low levels of student engagement and gaps in students’ use of evidence in forming arguments. Earth Science students provided written responses to two questions using the previously implemented Claim, Evidence, Reasoning (CER) framework. The first question was answered without...

A new species of rhinoceros, Teleoceras aepysoma n. sp., is described from the late Hemphillian-aged Gray Fossil Site of eastern Tennessee. Fossils from a minimum of six individuals, including two nearly complete, articulated skeletons, have been found at the Gray Fossil Site. Availability of such complete specimens enables a thorough morphological...

A layman's overview of conservation paleontology, written for bison managers and ranchers across North America.

Field stations across the United States provide learning opportunities to the general public through their outreach programming. With approximately 78% and 98% of the US population living within 60 and 120 miles of a field station, respectively, stations have the potential to be key providers of informal STEM education. We surveyed a sample of US b...

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...

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...

A layman's overview of the recently published discovery of the "Higgs Bison" in Eurasia and its implications on bison management and conservation.

Middle and high school teachers who participate in the Maine Physical Sciences Partnership (MainePSP) noted persistent problems in their classrooms, including low levels of student engagement and gaps in how students use evidence. To address these problems, this study was designed in collaboration with MainePSP teachers in a design-based implementa...

A thorough morphological description of Teleoceras material from the Gray Fossil Site, Gray, Tennessee is provided. This is the only record of a browsing Teleoceras and, as a late Hemphillian locality, represents 1 of the youngest populations. Linear measurements of post-cranial elements indicate proportional differences between Teleoceras from the...