About
53
Publications
36,512
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
2,598
Citations
Introduction
Additional affiliations
September 2018 - present
Black Rock Forest
Position
- Researcher
September 2016 - August 2018
October 2013 - August 2016
Publications
Publications (53)
Macroecological studies that require habitat suitability data for many species often derive this information from expert opinion. However, expert‐based information is inherently subjective and thus prone to errors. The increasing availability of GPS tracking data offers opportunities to evaluate and supplement expert‐based information with detailed...
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...
The Arctic is entering a new ecological state, with alarming consequences for humanity. Animal-borne sensors offer a window into these changes. Although substantial animal tracking data from the Arctic and subarctic exist, most are difficult to discover and access. Here, we present the new Arctic Animal Movement Archive (AAMA), a growing collection...
The Arctic is entering a new ecological state, with alarming consequences for humanity. Animal-borne sensors offer a window into these changes. Although substantial animal tracking data from the Arctic and subarctic exist, most are difficult to discover and access. Here, we present the new Arctic Animal Movement Archive (AAMA), a growing collection...
Data used for AAMA Science article.
https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.k98sf7m4m
Animal tracking data are being collected more frequently, in greater detail, and on smaller taxa than ever before. These data hold the promise to increase the relevance of animal movement for understanding ecological processes, but this potential will only be fully realized if their accompanying location error is properly addressed. Historically, c...
Accurately quantifying species’ area requirements is a prerequisite for effective area‐based conservation. This typically involves collecting tracking data on species of interest and then conducting home‐range analyses. Problematically, autocorrelation in tracking data can result in space needs being severely underestimated. Based on previous work,...
Satellite telemetry is an increasingly utilized technology in wildlife research, and current devices can track individual animal movements at unprecedented spatial and temporal resolutions. However, as we enter the golden age of satellite telemetry, we need an in-depth understanding of the main technological, species-specific and environmental fact...
R-code for boosted beta regression (Fix acquisition rate).
(R)
Covariate partial effects on the variability of the fix acquisition rate.
(PDF)
Tagged individuals per species.
(PDF)
Covariate partial effects on the variability of the Overall fix success rate.
(PDF)
Global dataset for boosted beta regressions.
(CSV)
Description of data fields in S1 Data.
(CSV)
Satellite telemetry articles published.
(PDF)
Distribution of response variables and covariates.
(PDF)
Unit purchase and operation costs.
(PDF)
R-code for boosted beta regression (Overall fix success rate).
(R)
Standardized data collection questionnaire.
(PDF)
Satellite telemetry evaluations.
(PDF)
Aim
Animal movement is an important determinant of individual survival, population dynamics and ecosystem structure and function. Nonetheless, it is still unclear how local movements are related to resource availability and the spatial arrangement of resources. Using resident bird species and migratory bird species outside the migratory period, we...
Snow covers Arctic and boreal regions(ABRs)for approximately 9 months of the year, thussnowscapes dominate the form and function of tundra and boreal ecosystems. In recent decades,Arctic warming has changed the snowcover’s spatial extent and distribution, as well as its seasonaltiming and duration, while also altering the physical characteristics o...
Home range estimation is routine practice in ecological research. While advances in animal tracking technology have increased our capacity to collect data to support home range analysis, these same advances have also resulted in increasingly autocorrelated data. Consequently the question of which home range estimator to use on modern, highly autoco...
Winters are limiting for many terrestrial animals due to energy deficits brought on by resource scarcity and the increased metabolic costs of thermoregulation and traveling through snow. A better understanding of how animals respond to snow conditions is needed to predict the impacts of climate change on wildlife. We compared the performance of rem...
Animal movement is fundamental for ecosystem functioning and species survival, yet the effects of the anthropogenic footprint on animal movements have not been estimated across species. Using a unique GPS-tracking database of 803 individuals across 57 species, we found that movements of mammals in areas with a comparatively high human footprint wer...
In a rare phenomenon, shrews and few other species cope with seasonal environments by reducing and regrowing brain size, potentially at the cost of changes in cognitive abilities. Here, we confirm an extensive, seasonal shrinkage (21.4%) and regrowth (17.0%) of brain mass in winter and spring, respectively, in common shrew (Sorex araneus L.) in Sou...
Skeletal ontogeny in mammals is typically progressive and unidirectional, leading to a continuous growth of each skeleton component and reaching a plateau of minimal change in adulthood . However, some species exhibit a rare seasonal effect which causes reversible shrinking and regrowth of different body parts, specially the skull. Traditional tech...
We introduce fast implementations for the likelihood functions, telemetry error filters, probabilistic trajectory and velocity reconstructions, and movement-path simulations for a large class of continuous-time movement models. This class of models includes all of the basic continuous-time models that have been applied to animal movement. A diverse...
Ontogenetic changes in skull shape and size are ubiquitous in altricial vertebrates, but typically unidirectional and minimal in full-grown animals. Red-toothed shrews exhibit a rare exception, where the shape, mass and size of the skull, brain, and several major organs, show significant bidirectional seasonal changes. We now show a similar but mal...
Investigating animal energy expenditure across space and time may provide more detailed insight into how animals interact with their environment. This insight should improve our understanding of how changes in the environment affect animal energy budgets and is particularly relevant for animals living near or within human altered environments where...
1.It is natural to regard most animal movement as a continuous-time process, generally observed at discrete times. Most existing statistical methods for movement data ignore this; the remainder mostly use discrete-time approximations, the statistical properties of which have not been widely studied, or are limited to special cases. We aim to facili...
Efforts to reduce the negative impacts of roads on wildlife may be hindered if individuals within the population vary widely in their responses to roads and mitigation strategies ignore this variability. This knowledge is particularly important for medium-sized carnivores as they are vulnerable to road mortality, while also known to use available r...
Tracking animal movement using global positioning system (GPS) technology is an increasingly popular method for studying animal ecology, behavior, and conservation. To date, most GPS location schedules have been set at regular intervals, which if set too long under-sample the details of movement paths, and if set too short over-sample resting sites...
1. The recently developed Brownian bridge movement model (BBMM) has advantages over traditional methods because it quantifes the utilization distribution of an animal based on its movement path rather than individual points and accounts for temporal autocorrelation and high data volumes. However, the BBMM presumes unrealistic homogeneous movement b...
Carnivores are difficult to survey due, in large part, to their relative rarity across the landscape and wariness toward humans. Several noninvasive methods may aid in overcoming these difficulties, but there has been little discussion of the relative merits and biases of these techniques. We assess the value of 5 noninvasive techniques based on re...
Carnivores are difficult to survey due, in large part, to their relative rarity across the landscape and wariness toward humans. Several noninvasive methods may aid in overcoming these difficulties, but there has been little discussion of the relative merits and biases of these techniques. We assess the value of 5 noninvasive techniques based on re...
Carnivores are difficult to survey due, in large part, to their relative rarity across the landscape and wariness toward humans. Several noninvasive methods may aid in overcoming these difficulties, but there has been little discussion of the relative merits and biases of these techniques. We assess the value of 5 noninvasive techniques based on re...
The proposed construction of the “Rooftop Highway” between Interstates 81 and 87
in Northern New York has drawn opposition from those concerned about conserving
an important north-south animal migration route. This highway could affect the ecological integrity of the Adirondack ecosystem and further isolate the Park from
other conservation areas su...
The issue of connectivity in roaded landscapes is a controversial one. Conservationists argue for
significant expenditures on wildlife-friendly highway designs, while opponents fight against such
spending. A recent study evaluating wildlife use of underpasses in the Adirondack region of New
York ran headlong into this controversy, inadvertently fue...
Questions
Questions (4)
Hi, I am looking for data sources and/or references that describe brain mass increases in mammals with age. For context, I recently read a paper that shows captive mink brain mass peaks at approximately 3 months of age; i.e., the brain mass of the adult is less than that of a 3-month old. I want to know how common this brain mass growth pattern is, so I am searching for other references and sources for comparisons. Thank you all in advance.
It's increasingly common for journals to require authors to make their movement ecology data available upon acceptance of their papers. This process usually takes the route of publishing the paper, the data is deposited in a data repository (e.g., dryad), and the paper has a DOI link for the data in the repository.
However, what if a scientist decides they are done with their data set and simply wants to publish the data set in an accredited way, without being linked to a paper? For example, what if your papers have only used a fraction of the data set and you would like to make the entire data set available and free? To rather publish the data and have future papers reference to the data set.
I have seen data papers in journals like Ecology and the Biodiversity Data Journal, but rarely animal movement data, per se. I have also seen published papers that have DOIs to movement data archived on movebank.org, for example. From what I gather though, movebank.org can not directly publish a data set (it must be linked to a journal paper, as it is built from Dryad's open-source code).
Where do the data silo miners go for re-location data? What if the data does not need to be species or taxon specific? Where do you find relative-positional data with specific temporal resolutions? Can I publish a data set to seek a data analysis challenge?
Just wondering what folks are doing and trying to find a logical solution for myself. Cheers!
I'm leaving my research comfort zone (movement ecology) to explore potential braincase changes in mammals. Specifically, I'd like to measure how the shape of a mammal's skull changes throughout it's life post-parturition. As I am quite naive to this topic, I'm asking my peers to suggest papers or other sources for me to familiarize myself with.
Have others quantified size changes in mammalian skulls before? Do mice skulls become 'flatter' with age? Besides sagital crest development, do carnivore skulls become wider with age? These are the sort of questions that I'm looking into.
Any suggestions would be helpful. Thanks in advance!
I would like to investigate a possible relationship between the daily activity patterns of an animal and the timing and amount of daylight experiences by the animal. I do not have light-logger data per animal, so I am searching for a free data source. Ideally this data would be location specific (I'm working near Albany, New York, USA) and available per minute. Can any one suggest a data source? Perhaps something widely accepted within the circadian biology community?
Projects
Projects (2)
Understanding the individual, seasonal and reversible size changes in shrews and other small, high-metabolic mammals that include the brain and skull - i.e. Dehnel's Phenomenon. Incredibly cool and puzzling and great to renew interest in an old favourite of mine: what does brain size mean?
Trying to better understand the potential behavioral responses of six species (i.e., golden eagles, caribou, moose, dall sheep, brown bear, and wolves) to arctic climate change via NASA’s Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment. For my part, I am exploring golden eagle migratory behavior over the last 20+ years (including the timing and rate of migration, the use of stop-overs, and the relationships of these behaviors with environmental covariates). With each species we hope to better understand whether they are plastic or fixed in their behaviors as the arctic continues to warm with a less and less predictable climate. See the project page here: http://above.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/above/inv_pgp.pl?pgid=3391&fullab=1#abanchor
