Browsing by Author "Garrott, Robert"

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1H NMR based metabolic profiling distinguishes the differential impact of capture techniques on wild bighorn sheep
(Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2021-05) O’Shea-Stone, Galen; Lambert, Rachelle; Tripet, Brian; Berardinelli, James; Thomson, Jennifer; Copié, Valérie; Garrott, Robert
Environmental metabolomics has the potential to facilitate the establishment of a new suite of tools for assessing the physiological status of important wildlife species. A first step in developing such tools is to evaluate the impacts of various capture techniques on metabolic profiles as capture is necessary to obtain the biological samples required for assays. This study employed 1H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)-based metabolite profiling of 562 blood serum samples from wild bighorn sheep to identify characteristic molecular serum makers of three capture techniques (dart, dropnet, and helicopter-based captures) to inform future sampling protocols for metabolomics studies, and to provide insights into the physiological impacts of capture. We found that different capture techniques induce distinct changes in amino acid serum profiles, the urea cycle, and glycolysis, and attribute the differences in metabolic patterns to differences in physical activity and stress caused by the different capture methods. These results suggest that when designing experiments involving the capture of wild animals, it may be prudent to employ a single capture technique to reduce confounding factors. Our results also supports administration of tranquilizers as soon as animals are restrained to mitigate short-term physiological and metabolic responses when using pursuit and physical restraint capture techniques.
Drivers of variation in the population dynamics of bighorn sheep
(Wiley, 2021-07) Paterson, J. Terrill; Proffitt, Kelly M.; Rotella, Jay; McWhirter, Douglas; Garrott, Robert
Understanding how variation in vital rates interact to shape the trajectories of populations has long been understood to be a critical component of informed management and restoration efforts. However, an expanding body of work suggests that the expectations for population dynamics of ungulates may not be applicable to small, declining, or threatened populations. Populations of bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) suffered declines at the turn of the 20th century, and restoration efforts have been mixed such that many populations remain small and isolated. Here, we utilized survey data collected from 1983 to 2018 from 17 populations of bighorn sheep in Montana and Wyoming to estimate the parameters of a stage-specific population model that we used to (1) characterize the spatial and temporal variation in key vital rates including whether populations were stable, increasing, or declining; (2) estimate the contributions of vital rates to variation in population growth rates; and (3) evaluate potential sources of variation in lamb survival. We found substantial variation in all vital rates both among years and populations, strong evidence for an overall decline in nine of the 17 populations, and clear evidence for multiple combinations of vital rates that resulted in positive population trajectories. The contribution of ewe survival and lamb survival to the total variation in population growth rates varied among populations; however, declines in ewe survival dominated transitions of population trajectories from stable or increasing to declining, whereas reversals of declining population trajectories were dominated by improved lamb survival. We found strong evidence for a diverse set of associations between lamb survival and environmental covariates related to growing season and winter severity. The estimated relationships predict that environmental drivers can cause important changes in lamb survival and provide suggestive evidence that the presence of Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae is not sufficient to prevent population growth. Although our work demonstrates that the trajectories of these populations of bighorn sheep are driven by a variety of processes, the diversity of relationships between vital rates and population growth rates also suggests that there are multiple pathways to manage for population recovery.
Population trends of bighorn sheep and mountain goats in the Greater Yellowstone Area
(2013-03) Flesch, Elizabeth P.; Garrott, Robert
Bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) and mountain goats (Oreamnos americanus) are important components of the large mammal community in the Greater Yellowstone Area (GYA). We analyzed historic bighorn sheep and mountain goat population counts collected by management biologists using ln-linear regression to estimate herd growth rates. Most mountain goat count units experienced a positive growth rate and increased their distributions over recent decades. Bighorn sheep growth rates were more variable among the 26 recognized herd units in the GYA. We used the historic count data to evaluate the hypothesis that sympatry of non-native mountain goats with bighorn sheep adversely affected bighorn sheep populations. This was accomplished by comparing the growth rates of sympatric herds with that of allopatric herds. There was no evidence that sympatric herd growth rates were significantly lower than allopatric herd growth rates. We caution, however, that many counts in consecutive years suggested larger changes in abundance than what would be reasonable to expect from biological processes. We suspect that variability in counts likely reflects varying detection probability and the overall difficulty of counting mountain ungulates. Therefore, conclusions derived from these data should be further evaluated with more detailed demographic studies in the future.