With fewer than 50 birds remaining in the wild, Attwater's Prairie-Chicken (Tympanuchus cupido attwateri) is critically endangered. Individuals of this species on the Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge, Colorado Co., TX, have been attacked in successive winters, 2005-2006, by the blood-feeding black fly Cnephia ornithophilia. Attwater's Prairie-Chicken is a previously unreported ...

During a recent survey for West Nile virus in wild birds around the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge, Imperial County, California (Dusek et al. 2010), we captured a female American Kestrel (Falco sparuerius) with a severe bill deformity (Figure 1). The kestrel was captured on 9 March 2006, at 08:45, approximately 0.25 km south of the intersection of Wiest and Lindsey roads (33 0 0...

Data were provided by the United States Geological Survey on selenium concentrations collected over Benton Lake National Wildlife Refuge near Great Falls, Montana. High selenium concentrations are known to decrease reproduction rates in lake waterfowl (USFWS, 2012, p. 204). Previous work in sediment selenium data included mean concentration estimates and comparisons using several variance estim...

Marine reserves have been widely promoted as conservation and fishery management tools. There are robust demonstrations of conservation benefits, but fishery benefits remain controversial. We show that marine reserves in Florida (United States) and St. Lucia have enhanced adjacent fisheries. Within 5 years of creation, a network of five small reserves in St. Lucia increased adjacent catches of ...

In recent decades, scientists have discovered that the presence of human hormones and hormonemimicking chemicals in rivers, lakes, and streams can affect the endocrine systems of fish. These chemicals can feminize male fish, masculinize female fish, impact reproduction, and potentially affect the population’s ability to survive. This working paper attempts to summarize the local findings of a l...

We describe a new species of piroplasm from brown boobies (Sula leucogaster) on Sand Island, Johnston Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, central Pacific. Mean parasitemia in adults and chicks was less than 1%, with the parasitemia in chicks significantly greater than in adults. There was no significant relation between the age of chicks and the degree of parasitemia. Parasitized red cells and red ...

The diurnal distribution and abundance dynamics of loafing Glaucous-winged Gulls (Larus glaucescens) were examined at Protection Island National Wildlife Refuge, Strait of Juan de Fuca, Washington. Asynchronous movement of gulls among three habitat patches dedicated to loafing was modeled as a function of environmental variables using differential equations. Multiple time scale analysis led to ...

Disease has caused striking declines in wildlife and threatens numerous species with extinction. Theory suggests that the ecology and density-dependence of transmission dynamics can determine the probability of disease-caused extinction, but few empirical studies have simultaneously examined multiple factors influencing disease impact. We show, in hibernating bats infected with Geomyces destruc...

QuickBird satellite imagery was evaluated for differentiating among rangeland cover types on the Welder Wildlife Refuge in south Texas. The satellite imagery had a spatial resolution of 2.8 m and contained 11-bit data. Four subsets of the satellite image were extracted and used as study sites. Field spectral measurements made among the dominant vegetation types showed significant differences in...

Cupriavidus sp. strain AMP6 is an aerobic, motile, Gram-negative, non-spore-forming rod that was isolated from a root nodule of Mimosa asperata collected in Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, Texas, in 2005. Mimosa asperata is the only legume described so far to exclusively associates with Cupriavidus symbionts. Moreover, strain AMP6 represents an early-diverging lineage within the symbiotic C...