Sarah P. Saunders

National Audubon Society | AUDUBON · Science Division - remote in Grand Rapids MI

Rapidly warming global temperatures are having a widespread influence on wildlife communities across taxa, with southern‐edge populations often experiencing the greatest negative impacts. However, sympatric species may exhibit divergent demographic responses due to differences in life history strategies and niche separation. We used integrated popu...

Aim Species distribution models (SDMs) are increasingly applied across macroscales using detection‐nondetection data. These models typically assume that a single set of regression coefficients can adequately describe species–environment relationships and/or population trends. However, such relationships often show nonlinear and/or spatially varying...

Occupancy models are frequently used by ecologists to quantify spatial variation in species distributions while accounting for observational biases in the collection of detection-nondetection data. However, the common assumption that a single set of regression coefficients can adequately explain species-environment relationships is often unrealisti...

Occupancy models are frequently used by ecologists to quantify spatial variation in species distributions while accounting for observational biases in the collection of detection-nondetection data. However, the common assumption that a single set of regression coefficients can adequately explain species-environment relationships is often unrealisti...

Abstract The conservation of migratory birds poses a fundamental challenge, their conservation requires coordinated action across the hemisphere, but those actions must be designed and implemented locally. To address this challenge, we describe a multilevel framework for linking broad‐scale, full annual cycle prioritizations to local conservation a...

The conservation of migratory birds poses a fundamental challenge: their conservation requires coordinated action across the hemisphere, but those actions must be designed and implemented locally. To address this challenge, we describe a multi-level framework for linking broad-scale, full annual cycle prioritizations to local conservation actions f...

Area-based conservation targets, such as ‘30−30’, if strategically applied, can increase resiliency to climate change and provide co-benefits to people and biodiversity. However, protected areas historically were not designated within the context of global change, and human communities at highest risk are often overlooked in conservation planning....

Species distribution models (SDMs) are increasingly applied across macroscales. However, assumptions of stationarity in species-environment relationships or population trends inherent to most SDM techniques are frequently violated at broad spatial scales. Bayesian spatially-varying coefficient (SVC) models can readily account for nonstationarity, y...

Countries have set targets for conserving natural areas to mitigate biodiversity loss, such as the protection of 30% of lands by 2030, commonly referred to as “30 by 30”. Yet strategic conservation planning to align those targets with climate‐change refugia is lacking. We investigated the feasibility of achieving 30 by 30 in North America by assess...

Climate‐informed spatial planning is urgently needed to guide initiatives aimed at both conserving biodiversity as a whole (e.g. protection of 30% of lands and waters by 2030) and recovering North American avifauna in particular. Various methods for prioritizing conservation areas exist, yet alternative methods may direct managers to different land...

Wetland birds are undergoing severe population declines in North America, with habitat degradation and wetland loss considered two of the primary causes. Due to the cryptic nature of many wetland bird species, the ecological conditions (e.g., matrix composition) that influence bird occupancy, and the relevant spatial scales at which to measure bird...

For many avian species, spatial migration patterns remain largely undescribed, especially across hemispheric extents. Recent advancements in tracking technologies and high‐resolution species distribution models (i.e., eBird Status and Trends products) provide new insights into migratory bird movements and offer a promising opportunity for integrati...

One of the most pressing questions in ecology and conservation centers on disentangling the relative impacts of concurrent global change drivers, climate and land‐use/land‐cover (LULC), on biodiversity. Yet studies that evaluate the effects of both drivers on species’ winter distributions remain scarce, hampering our ability to develop full‐annual‐...

Abstract Projecting species’ responses to future climate conditions is critical for anticipating conservation challenges and informing proactive policy and management decisions. However, best practices for choosing climate models for projection ensembles are currently in flux. We compared including a maximum number of models against trimming ensemb...

Declines in the abundance and diversity of insects pose a substantial threat to terrestrial ecosystems worldwide. Yet, identifying the causes of these declines has proved difficult, even for well-studied species like monarch butterflies, whose eastern North American population has decreased markedly over the last three decades. Three hypotheses hav...

Evaluation of protected area effectiveness is critical for conservation of biodiversity. Protected areas that prioritize biodiversity conservation are, optimally, located and managed in ways that support relatively large and stable or increasing wildlife populations. Yet evaluating conservation efficacy remains a challenging endeavor. We used an ex...

The recognized gap between research and implementation in avian conservation can be overcome with translational ecology, an intentional approach in which science producers and users from multiple disciplines work collaboratively to co-develop and deliver ecological research that addresses management and conservation issues. Avian conservation natur...

The recognized gap between research and implementation in avian conservation can be overcome with translational ecology, an intentional approach in which science producers and users from multiple disciplines work collaboratively to co-develop and deliver ecological research that addresses management and conservation issues. Avian conservation natur...

Together climate and land‐use change play a crucial role in determining species distribution and abundance, but measuring the simultaneous impacts of these processes on current and future population trajectories is challenging due to time lags, interactive effects and data limitations. Most approaches that relate multiple global change drivers to p...

Data integration is a statistical modeling approach that incorporates multiple data sources within a unified analytical framework. Macrosystems ecology – the study of ecological phenomena at broad scales, including interactions across scales – increasingly employs data integration techniques to expand the spatiotemporal scope of research and infere...

Human activity surrounding the Laurentian Great Lakes basin has significantly degraded coastal wetland habitats, resulting in severe marsh bird population declines and reduced coastal resilience to changing environmental conditions. Given the need to conserve remaining coastal wetlands for wildlife and people, we developed a spatial prioritization...

Climate change poses an intensifying threat to many bird species and projections of future climate suitability provide insight into how species may shift their distributions in response. Climate suitability is characterized using ecological niche models (ENMs), which correlate species occurrence data with current environmental covariates and projec...

The increasing intensity of wetland stressors in the Upper Midwestern United States hastens the need to understand how matrix composition influences wetland bird occurrence and abundance. The optimal spatial scale for assessing species–habitat relationships is not always apparent, but may affect inference about wetland use and suitability. We devel...

A common challenge for studying wildlife populations occurs when different survey methods provide inconsistent or incomplete inference on the trend, dynamics, or viability of a population. A potential solution to the challenge of conflicting or piecemeal data relies on the integration of multiple data types into a unified modeling framework, such a...

Significance We address a debate that has spurred scientific and public discourse: whether conditions during autumn migration are contributing to the decline of the eastern monarch butterfly population. Using a multiscale modeling approach, we reveal that continental-scale landscape greenness during migration (proxy for nectar availability) and the...

Obtaining inferences on disease dynamics (e.g., host population size, pathogen prevalence, transmission rate, host survival probability) typically requires marking and tracking individuals over time. While multistate mark–recapture models can produce high-quality inference, these techniques are difficult to employ at large spatial and long temporal...

Predicting population responses to environmental conditions or management scenarios is a fundamental challenge for conservation. Proper consideration of demographic, environmental and parameter uncertainties is essential for projecting population trends and optimal conservation strategies. We developed a coupled integrated population model‐Bayesian...

Assessing the impacts of ongoing climate and anthropogenic-induced change on wildlife populations requires understanding species distributions and abundances across large spatial and temporal scales. For threatened or declining populations, collecting sufficient broad-scale data is challenging as sample sizes tend to be low because many such specie...

Quantifying how climate and land use factors drive population dynamics at regional scales is complex because it depends on the extent of spatial and temporal synchrony among local populations, and the integration of population processes throughout a species’ annual cycle. We modeled weekly, site-specific summer abundance (1994 – 2013) of monarch bu...

Occupancy modeling is a widely used analytical technique for assessing species distributions and range dynamics. However, occupancy analyses ignore variation in abundances of occupied sites, even though site abundances affect many of the parameters being estimated (e.g., extinction, colonization, detection probability). We introduce a new model (“d...

Aim Forecasting ecological responses to climate change is a common objective, but there are few methods for evaluating confidence in such predictions. For migratory species, in particular, it is also essential to consider the extent of spatial synchrony among separate breeding populations in range‐wide predictions. We develop a quantitative method...

Few investigators have studied the offspring sex ratios of monomorphic shorebirds because visually determining the sex of juveniles is not possible. We investigated the ontogeny of an observed male-biased adult sex ratio in the federally endangered Great Lakes population of Piping Plovers (Charadrius melodus). We determined sex ratios at hatching,...

Renesting is an important breeding strategy used by birds to compensate for nest failure. If birds renest, clutch removal for captive rearing can be used to augment endangered populations; however, not all individuals renest following nest loss, and later nesting attempts may have lower survival rates and clutch sizes. We investigated variation in...

Juvenile survival and age at first breeding (i.e. recruitment) are critical parameters affecting population dynamics in birds, but high levels of natal dispersal preclude measurement of these variables in most species. We used multi-state capture–recapture models to measure age-specific survival and recruitment probabilities of piping plovers Chara...

Understanding factors that influence reproduction and offspring survival in zoo populations is critical for management of threatened and endangered species. Examination of long-term data (1989-2011) compiled from the Association of Zoos and Aquarium's zoo-managed tiger breeding program provides the basis for a more thorough understanding of reprodu...

Captive rearing of endangered species for later release is a method used to augment critically small populations, although studies have shown lower survival and fitness for individuals raised in captivity. Since 1992, recovery efforts for the endangered Great Lakes piping plover population have included captive rearing, but released young have lowe...

The Great Lakes population of Piping Plovers (Charadrius melodus) is federally endangered, numbering between 17 and 71 pairs during 1986-2011. Recovery efforts are diverse, but a major management focus is reduction of predation on eggs and chicks. We evaluated rates and potential causes of mortality for 2,143 chicks from 597 broods at 31 separate b...

Reproductive success commonly improves with age in birds. However, it is difficult to determine whether this phenomenon is due to breeding experience or other age-related factors because most potential explanatory factors are positively correlated. Using a 17-year database, we investigated how age, breeding experience, location experience, and pair...