Todd Steury

• Ph.D.
• Professor (Associate) at Auburn University

Saltwater angling is a culturally significant and economically vital coastal recreational activity, particularly in the Gulf of Mexico that attracts enthusiasts worldwide and contributes significantly to the well-being of Gulf Coast communities. However, angling can threaten ecologically important species, notably sea turtles, which are federally p...

Animals that experience a food-scarce season can supplement their diet by scatterhoarding, or burying food around their home range, and then retrieving and consuming those food items at a later date. Theft, or pilferage, is considered the greatest risk to stored food; yet little is known about the pilferage risk of different types of seeds. We inve...

Based on principles of natural selection, high-quality individuals may benefit by selecting mates of similar phenotypic quality when given the opportunity; that is, individuals may benefit by engaging in a form of non-random mating referred to as positive assortative mating. In ungulates, the idea of mate selectivity is still highly debated, with f...

Crop foraging by African savannah elephants Loxodonta africana negatively affects farmer livelihoods and support for conservation, yet affordable, sustainable and practical solutions remain elusive. To inform conservation priorities, our goal was to assess the hitherto little explored relationships between farmers’ views on agricultural damage and...

Synopsis Climate resilience, a focus of many recent studies, has been examined from ecological, physiological, and evolutionary perspectives. However, sampling biases toward adults, males, and certain species have made establishing the link between environmental change and population-level change problematic. Here, we used data from four laboratory...

The gopher tortoise (Gopherus polyphemus) is a species of concern in the southeastern United States, and its distribution is within the range of the longleaf pine (Pinus palustris). One conservation strategy within the state of Alabama has been translocation of adult tortoises to other areas with longleaf pine and sandy soils, including areas outsi...

Management of wild pigs (Sus scrofa) typically employs some form of population survey methodology, and trail cameras are the most com- mon tool for conducting these surveys. Identification of individual sounders is generally at the foundation of these population surveys. Pelage char- acteristics and relative age distribution of individuals within t...

The global shipping network (GSN) has been suggested as a pathway for the establishment and reintroduction of Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus primarily via the tire trade. We used historical maritime movement data in combination with an agent-based model to understand invasion risk in the United States Gulf Coast and how the risk of these invasi...

Authors are often faced with the decision of whether to maximize traditional impact metrics or minimize costs when choosing where to publish the results of their research. Many subscription-based journals now offer the option of paying an article processing charge (APC) to make their work open. Though such “hybrid” journals make research more acces...

Animals benefit from scatterhoarding, storing food around their home range for use during a period of scarcity, by later eating the stored food. Seedlings may be used as cues of belowground food. We investigated whether scatterhoarders such as eastern gray squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis Gmelin, 1788) and eastern chipmunks (Tamias striatus (Linnaeu...

Simple Summary Cotton leafroll dwarf virus (CLRDV) is capable of causing yield loss in cotton. Eight species of aphids have been reported to feed on cotton, but Aphis gossypii is the only known CLRDV vector in the United States (U.S.). Little is known about their distribution, abundance, and seasonal dynamics in the southern U.S. The epidemiologica...

Farmers in sub-Saharan Africa are facing threats to their livelihoods including climate change, unsustainable farming practices, increasing water scarcity, and crop raiding herbivores, among other challenges. How demographic, economic, and social factors impact farmers’ attitudes and responses to such threats and the relationship to conservation in...

Scatterhoarder responses to factors that influence stored food (i.e., flooding) is important given the strong reliance on hoarded food for survival. We examined how eastern gray squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis, Gmelin 1778) have adapted to a seasonally flooded ecosystem in Alabama. Our study area was dry September–November and flooded the rest of t...

In reproductive dynamics, recruitment is a critical biological process to ensure populations remain viable. While extrinsic factors such as predation and environmental factors (e.g., droughts) have been found to strongly influence recruitment, knowledge gaps still exist on how maternal factors such as age, body size, and past reproductive history i...

Authors are often faced with the decision of whether to maximize impact or minimize costs when publishing the results of their research. For example, to potentially improve impact via increased accessibility, many subscription-based journals now offer the option of paying a fee to publish open access (i.e., hybrid journals), but this solution exclu...

BACKGROUND Widespread reports of reduced efficacy of imidacloprid for managing cotton aphids (Aphis gossypii Glover) in cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) prompted an investigation to characterize the susceptibility of 43 populations over a 2‐year period. The susceptibility of A. gossypii populations to imidacloprid was examined by calculating LC50 val...

While hormones such as testosterone are known to drive reproduction and sexually selected traits in many species, research demonstrating a relationship between testosterone and annual or overall reproductive success is sparse. We sought to directly measure how circulating testosterone relates to sexually selected characteristics and reproductive su...

The global shipping network (GSN) has been suggested as a pathway for the establishment and reintroduction of Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus primarily via the tire trade. We used historical maritime movement data in combination with an agent-based model to understand invasion risk in the United States Gulf Coast and how the risk of these invasi...

Hydroxycarboxylic acid receptor 2 (HCA2) , formally known as GPR109A, is a metabolite-sensing receptor expressed predominately on adipocytes, immune cells and intestinal epithelial cells. The primary endogenous ligand of HCA2 is β-hydroxybutyrate (βOHB) , which is elevated during periods of nutrient deprivation including fasting. Previous in vitro...

Participation in hunting has been declining and organizations have increased efforts to recruit non-traditional path hunters (NTPHs) such as adults who did not hunt as children, urban residents, and women. Anecdotal evidence suggests that NTPHs could be interested in hunting if recruiters emphasized certain aspects of the hunting experience such as...

Social, cultural, and economic differences have been shown to influence ecological knowledge. Given the importance of ecological knowledge for appreciation and protection of nature, we sought to investigate the relationship between landowners’ sociodemographic attributes and the number of birds listed by landowners on their property across a rural-...

Body size and secondary sexual characteristics are drivers of male reproductive success among polygynous species. A gene complex found to be associated with morphology in several species is the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). However, while several studies have found that greater MHC diversity is associated with larger body size and seconda...

As scatterhoarders, Sciurus carolinensis (Eastern Gray Squirrel) usually rely on food they buried during fall to survive cold winter months. However, the range of this species includes areas of the southeastern United States where winter flooding commonly restricts access to buried food during the recovery season. In this study, we investigated the...

Routine handling of oysters is a common industry practice for off-bottom oyster aquaculture, which aims to produce a high-quality oyster. These practices expose oysters to elevated temperatures and interrupt filter feeding, which can increase Vibrio vulnificus and V. parahaemolyticus levels within the oyster. The resubmersion of oysters after expos...

Commercial off-bottom aquaculture of the eastern oyster Crassostrea virginica is challenged by repeated summer mortality events that appear to affect triploid oysters disproportionally. Many farmers believe common farming practices, especially when performed during hot summer months, may increase triploid mortality. The goal of this study was to in...

Training in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is a top priority for driving economic growth and maintaining technological competitiveness. We propose that exposure to a rigorous research program as an undergraduate leads to success in a research STEM career. We compared the scientific outcomes of 88 participants from five Nat...

Incubation temperature has the potential to influence offspring sex, phenotype, and survival, particularly in species with temperature-dependent sex determination. However, relatively little is known about how incubation temperature affects sex ratio and offspring condition in other animals. Incubating birds allocate varying time for egg incubation...

One of the major concerns in conservation today is the loss of genetic diversity which is a frequent consequence of population isolation and small population sizes. Fragmentation of populations and persecution of carnivores has posed a substantial threat to the persistence of free ranging carnivores in North America since the arrival of European se...

Summary of collected samples (NAL). Summary of all sample collected and successfully genotyped in the NAL study region. Individual totals account for total unique individuals. (PDF)

Significance test He. Pairwise Nemenyi post hoc p-values of a Kruskal-Wallis rank sum ANOVA of He estimates. Pairwise comparisons that are below a 0.05 p-value are highlighted. (PDF)

PIDsib values. The PIDsib values per locus is the probability that full siblings will share a genotype at that given locus. The product of the per locus PIDsib values gives the probability that full siblings share a genotype comprised of the included loci. We set a 0.03 threshold for a genotype PIDsib value. For the NAL population the threshold was...

Significance test allelic richness. Pairwise Nemenyi post hoc p-values of a Kruskal-Wallis rank sum ANOVA of allelic richness estimates. Pairwise comparisons that are below a 0.05 p-value are highlighted. (PDF)

PCR protocol. Volumes of primers, and reagents (for listed concentrations) as well as μM concentration of primers used per individual sample for PCR, and thermocycler profile. (PDF)

Summary of collected samples (MRB). Summary of all samples collected and successfully genotyped for individual ID in the MRB study region. Individual totals account for total unique individuals. (PDF)

Significance test Ho. Pairwise Nemenyi post hoc p-values of a Kruskal-Wallis rank sum ANOVA of Ho estimates. Pairwise comparisons that are below a 0.05 p-value are highlighted. (PDF)

Most imperiled species are rare or elusive and difficult to detect, which makes gathering data to estimate their response to habitat restoration a challenge. We used a repeatable, systematic method for selecting focal species using relative sensitivities derived from occupancy analysis. Our objective was to select suites of focal species that would...

Symbiodinium is a diverse genus of unicellular dinoflagellate symbionts associating with various marine protists and invertebrates. Although the broad-scale diversity and phylogenetics of the Symbiodinium complex is well established, there have been surprisingly few data on fine-scale population structure and biogeography of these dinoflagellates....

Positive relationships between age, sexually selected traits, and male reproductive success have been reported for a number of polygynous ungulates; however, relatively little is known about the factors influencing male reproductive success in ungulate species whose mating system is characterized by tending-bond behaviors. Broad interest in the gen...

Mate choice based on age and body size is poorly understood among cervids. We used 14 microsatellite DNA loci to assign parentage and reconstruct the pedigree of a captive population of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in order to evaluate their mate choice and reproductive success. From 2008 to 2013, we assigned both dam and sire to 87 l...

Hybridization presents a unique challenge for conservation biologists and managers. While hybridization is an important evolutionary process, hybridization is also a threat formany native species. The endangered species recovery effort for the red wolf Canis rufus is a classic system for understanding and addressing the challenges of hybridization....

A previous work suggests that dietary fat may influence canine olfaction. The present study evaluated whether olfactory performance could be influenced by forms of dietary fat and exercise. Seventeen certified detection dogs were fed three different diets (high fat, low fat or high polyunsaturated fat) for 12 weeks. After 12 weeks, olfactory testin...

Questions: How does maternal condition and regional variation in resource abundance affect fetal sex ratio allocation, timing of litter conception, and decreased fecundity due to senescence? Data studied: We used female white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) maternal age and mass and reproductive tract data (number and sex of fetuses) collected...

Use of public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS) studies that collect local knowledge in a spatial format is increasing as a tool in natural resources management. Qualitative PPGIS studies have been conducted as individual interviews, as workshops, and in focus groups. As the number of qualitative PPGIS studies increases, so does...

Large carnivores, with their expansive home range and resource requirements, are a good model for understanding how animal populations alter habitat selection and use as human densities and development increase. We examined the habitat selection of red wolves (Canis rufus) in North Carolina, USA, where the population of red wolves resides in a mosa...

For cooperatively breeding groups composed of close relatives, whether and how a group avoids inbreeding are questions of key evolutionary and conservation importance. A number of strategies for inbreeding avoidance may be employed by cooperative breeders, including extrapair reproduction, reproductive suppression, and juvenile dispersal. However,...

As human–black bear conflicts increase, developing conflict mitigation strategies that account for both biological and social understanding has become a primary objective of managers. We examined black bear habitat use in the Florida Panhandle to understand its impact on the spatial distribution of conflicts. Focus groups were conducted with local...

Among cooperatively breeding species, delayed dispersal provides an opportunity for older siblings to help rear young. There is considerable variation in the extent to which cooperative breeders delay dispersal, however, and while delayed dispersal may be a consequence of adaptive evolution favouring family living, evidence for a genetic basis is l...

Canis rufus (Red Wolf) is critically endangered, with the only wild population consisting of <150 individuals. Currently, little is known about the food habits of this population. Such information may be vital to managing for the population's long-term persistence. We collected scats of Red Wolves for two consecutive pup-rearing seasons from six pa...

Snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus) populations found at high densities can be estimated using fecal pellet densities on rectangular plots, but this method has yet to be evaluated for low-density populations. We further tested the use of fecal pellet plots for estimating hare populations by correlating pellet densities with estimated hare numbers on 1...

Camera surveys often involve placing bait in front of the camera to capture animals more frequently, which could introduce biases in parameter estimates. From September 2008 to March 2009, we monitored cameras placed at random, along game trails, and at feed stations to determine if camera placement influenced measures of population demographics in...

The evolutionary maintenance of cooperative breeding systems is thought to be a function of relative costs and benefits to breeders, helpers and juveniles. Beneficial effects of helpers on early-life survivorship and performance have been established in several species, but lifetime fitness benefits and/or costs of being helped remain unclear, part...

ABSTRACT  The kernel density estimator is used commonly for estimating animal utilization distributions from location data. This technique requires estimation of a bandwidth, for which ecologists often use least-squares cross-validation (LSCV). However, LSCV has large variance and a tendency to under-smooth data, and it fails to generate a bandwidt...

The existence of cooperative breeding in diverse animal taxa has inspired much interest in what nonbreeding helpers gain from participation in rearing nondescendent young. A major theoretical explanation for this phenomenon has revolved around the notion of inclusive fitness, where delayed dispersers in a family-based group gain indirect fitness be...

Environmental perturbation can have a marked influence on abundance and trend in many animal populations, but information is scant on how numerical change relates to variability in density-dependent and density-independent processes acting on populations. Using breeding population estimates for 10 duck species from a survey area of approximately 2....

Abstract The ecology of Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis) and their main prey, snowshoe hares (Lepus americanus), is poorly understood in southern Canada and the contiguous United States compared to the boreal forest of Canada and Alaska, USA, where both species are well studied. However, given recent listing of lynx under the Endangered Species Act, a...

Interspecific competition can have a substantial impact on sympatric carnivore populations and may threaten reintroduction attempts of threatened or endangered species. Coyotes (Canis latrans) are the primary threat to recovery of red wolves (C. rufus) in the wild, through hybridization and loss of the red wolf genotype and habitat occupancy that r...

Geographical gradients in the stability of cyclic populations of herbivores and their predators may relate to the degree of specialization of predators. However, such changes are usually associated with transition from specialist to generalist predator species, rather than from geographical variation in dietary breadth of specialist predators. Cana...

The ability of animals to perceive changes in predation risk forms the foundation on which the nonlethal effects of predators are transmitted to prey populations and communities. Our goal here is to provide a wide-ranging treatment of risk perception, highlighting the many important issues that are largely unstudied. A key component of the percepti...

The majority of ectotherms grow slower but mature at a larger body size in colder environments. This phenomenon has puzzled biologists because classic theories of life-history evolution predict smaller sizes at maturity in environments that retard growth. During the last decade, intensive theoretical and empirical research has generated some plausi...

We modeled populations of lynx (Lynx canadensis) and snowshoe hares (Lepus americanus) to determine prey densities required for persistence of lynx translocated to the southern portion of the species' range. The models suggested that a density of 1.1–1.8 hares/h is required for lynx persistence; these densities are higher than those reported for mo...

For most territorial species that defend food or other resources, territory size is inversely related to resource density. However, in some food-based territorial species, larger territories are known to contain greater absolute resource availability. For these latter species, both the specific determinants of territory size, and the relationship b...

Body fat stores may serve as an index of condition in mammals. Thus, techniques that measure fat content accurately are important for assessing the ecological correlates of condition in mammal populations. We compared the ability of two conductive techniques, bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) and total body electrical conductivity (TOBEC), to...

We examined the relationship between physical condition and vulnerability to predation in 2 species of mammals having different life history traits. We predicted that predators would be more likely to kill substandard individuals disproportionately in red squirrels (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus) than in snowshoe hares (Lepus americanus), given that sciu...

Under the most common experimental protocol, which uses comparison of control and experimental groups subject to a single level of manipulative treatment, conclusions regarding the influences of manipulation are restricted to the presence or absence of an effect. An alternative approach, in which the experimental variable is invoked across multiple...

The allegedly noncyclic dynamics of southern snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus) populations may be ex- plained by a model invoking habitat fragmentation and facultative predation (the refugium model) under which animals dispersing from patches of preferred habitat fail to establish themselves because of predation by facultative carnivores. We compare...