Shaun Mccoshum

Cornell University | CU · Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

In the past decade, caverniculous bat populations have plummeted due to White-nose syndrome (WNS). Tri-colored bat ( Perimyotis subflavus ) populations have declined drastically in areas where WNS has been found, leading to the decision to protect tri-colored bats under the federal Endangered Species Act in the United States. At this time, there ha...

Inviting Pollinators and Other Wildlife Into Your Garden bridges ecology and conservation with habitat creation in gardens. The book covers the contiguous USA, southern Canada and Northern Mexico, with applicable ideas for every ecoregion including the dry regions of the southwest to wet forests of the Northeast. Dive into the landscape around you...

Digitized data from SCAN were merged with Ecoregion Level III data to create a list of known species for each area.

Ashmeadiella Cockerell (Megachilidae: Osmiini) is a bee genus endemic to North America, with greatest richness in arid and Mediterranean regions of the southwestern United States. Species relationships of Ashmeadiella were last analyzed in the 1950s, when Robert Sokal and Charles Michener developed a novel statistical clustering method for classifi...

Declining insect abundance is occurring around the world, and some management projects are aiming to utilize roadsides and other right-of-ways as insect conservation areas. In the US, the decline of the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus Linnaeus [Nymphalidae]) populations has led to multiple studies focusing on a small number of milkweed species...

Declining insect abundance is occurring around the world and some management projects are aiming to utilize roadsides and other rights-of-way as insect conservation areas. In the United States, the decline of the monarch butterfly (Danuas plexippus Linnaeus [Nymphalidae]) populations has led to multiple studies focusing on a small number of milkwee...

Anthropogenic land conversion poses one of the greatest threats to terrestrial ecosystems and causes habitat loss for species. The development of large solar energy facilities and urban sprawl are converting wild lands in the Southwest deserts of the USA for human use and resulting in habitat loss for desert species. This is in part due to the Sout...

Several species of bumblebees have recently experienced range contractions and possible extinctions. While threats to bees are numerous, few analyses have attempted to understand the relative importance of multiple stressors. Such analyses are critical for prioritizing conservation strategies. Here, we describe a landscape analysis of factors predi...

Coral reefs are ecologically and economically important, contributing to both fishing and ecotourism economies around the world. Tourism and recreational activities have increased in coastal areas and so has the use of sunscreen. Sunscreen reduces human exposure to harmful UV rays, but washes off during aquatic recreational activities, which may ne...

Prey populations can be strongly influenced by predators and parasitoids, and migratory prey whose distributions vary geographically throughout their breeding seasons encounter different combinations of predators and parasitoids throughout their range. North American monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) are susceptible to a wide variety of natura...

Monarch butterflies are one of the best studied non-pest lepidopterans, serving as a model for migration, chemical ecology, and insect conservation. Despite the intensity with which the larvae and adults have been studied, the cryptic pupal stage is often difficult to study in the wild. It is perhaps due to this difficulty that researchers have lar...

Monarch butterflies, Danaus plexippus L. (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae), have a multiple brood migration in the spring as they move between their overwintering grounds and summer breeding grounds. In Oklahoma, USA, monarchs produce at least one generation in the spring, which develops and continues the northward migration, leaving Oklahoma without a br...

Background/Question/Methods Canola (Brassica napus) is an oilseed crop harvested for biofuel and cooking oil and is planted in rotation with winter wheat in the South Central US. Production of canola has increased from 0 hectares 10 years ago, to over 93,000 hectares in 2013 in Oklahoma alone, but the influence of increased production on native in...

Glischrochilus sanguinolentus has not been previously recorded from Santa Catalina Island or from California. Thus, the collection of this species on Santa Catalina Island represents a new state record. The more cosmopolitan G. quadrisignatus has previously been documented in California but not on any of the California Channel Islands. Established...

Light affects all aspects of plant growth and development from seed germination to senescence. While there has been intensive investigation of the effects of blue and red light on development and tropisms, much less is known about the specific effects of green light exposure in plants. Several recent studies demonstrate that monochromatic green lig...