Ecology
The department's teaching and research addresses critical ecological and natural resources issues for Montana, but also tackles fundamental and applied questions around the globe. Undergraduate programs within the department include Fish & Wildlife Management and Ecology, Conservation Biology and Ecology, Organismal Biology, and Biology Teaching. Graduate programs (M.S. and P.hD.) include Fish & Wildlife Management or Biology and Biological Sciences and an intercollege PhD in Ecology and Environmental Sciences.
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Montana Cooperative Fishery Research Unit
www.montana.edu/mtcfru
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Recent Submissions
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Evaluating and presenting uncertainty in model‐based unconstrained ordination
(2019-12)Variability in ecological community composition is often analyzed by recording the presence or abundance of taxa in sample units, calculating a symmetric matrix of pairwise distances or dissimilarities among sample units ... -
Thermal variability drives synchronicity of an aquatic insect resource pulse
(2019-08)Spatial heterogeneity in environmental conditions can prolong food availability by desynchronizing the timing of ephemeral, high‐magnitude resource pulses. Spatial patterns of water temperature are highly variable among ... -
Inter-population differences in salinity tolerance of adult wild Sacramento splittail: osmoregulatory and metabolic responses to salinity
(2016-02)The Sacramento splittail (Pogonichthys macrolepidotus) is a minnow endemic to the highly modified San Francisco Estuary of California, USA and its associated rivers and tributaries. This species is composed of two genetically ... -
Nesting success of wood-cavity-nesting bees declines with increasing time since wildfire
(2019-10)Bees require distinct foraging and nesting resources to occur in close proximity. However, spatial and temporal patterns in the availability and quantity of these resources can be affected by disturbances like wildfire. ... -
Diel cycling hypoxia enhances hypoxia-tolerance in rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss): evidence of physiological and metabolic plasticity
(2019-07-19)Many fish naturally encounter a daily cycle of hypoxia, but it is unclear whether this exposure hardens hypoxia-intolerant fish to future hypoxia or leads to accumulated stress and death. The rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus ... -
Snowpack influences spatial and temporal soil nitrogen dynamics in a western U.S. montane forested watershed
(2019-07-19)Declines in winter snowpack have increased the severity of summer droughts in western U.S. forests, with the potential to also impact soil available nitrogen (N). To understand how snowpack controls spatiotemporal N ... -
Evaluating mechanisms of plant-mediated effects on herbivore persistence and occupancy across an ecoregion
(2019-06)Contemporary climate change is rapidly creating one of the greatest challenges for management and conservation during the 21st century. Mountain ecosystems, which have a high degree of spatial heterogeneity and contain ... -
The Climatic Water Balance and Topography Control Spatial Patterns of Atmospheric Demand, Soil Moisture, and Shallow Subsurface Flow
(2019-05)Catchment hydrometeorology and the organization of shallow subsurface flow are key drivers of active contributing areas and streamflow generation. However, understanding how the climatic water balance and complex topography ... -
Killer whales redistribute white shark foraging pressure on seals
(2019-04)Predatory behavior and top-down effects in marine ecosystems are well-described, however, intraguild interactions among co-occurring marine top predators remain less understood, but can have far reaching ecological ... -
Beyond MRV: high-resolution forest carbon modeling for climate mitigation planning over Maryland, USA
(2019-04)Forests are important ecosystems that are under increasing pressure from human use and environmental change, and have a significant ability to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and are therefore the focus of policy ... -
Predatory fish invasion induces within and across ecosystem effects in Yellowstone National Park
(2019-03)Predatory fish introduction can cause cascading changes within recipient freshwater ecosystems. Linkages to avian and terrestrial food webs may occur, but effects are thought to attenuate across ecosystem boundaries. Using ... -
Simulation-based validation of spatial capture-recapture models: A case study using mountain lions
(2019-04)Spatial capture-recapture (SCR) models have improved the ability to estimate densities of rare and elusive animals. However, SCR models have seldom been validated even as model formulations diversify and expand to incorporate ... -
Identifying occupancy model inadequacies: can residuals separately assess detection and presence?
(2019-04)Occupancy models are widely applied to estimate species distributions, but few methods exist for model checking. Thorough model assessments can uncover inadequacies and allow for deeper ecological insight by exploring ... -
Effects of Climate-Related Stream Factors on Patterns of Individual Summer Growth of Cutthroat Trout
(2019-01)Coldwater fishes are sensitive to abiotic and biotic stream factors, which can be influenced by climate. Distributions of inland salmonids in North America have declined significantly, with many of the current strongholds ... -
Maladaptive nest-site selection by a sagebrush dependent species in a grazing-modified landscape
(2019-04)Animals are expected to select habitats that maximize their fitness over evolutionary time scales. Yet in human-modified landscapes, habitat selection might not always lead to increased fitness because animals undervalue ... -
Crayfish ecosystem engineering effects on riverbed disturbance and topography are mediated by size and behavior
(2018-12)Animals that burrow, forage, or produce physical structures can have substantial impacts on transport processes related to erosion. However, the influence of behavior and body size on regulating the magnitude of engineering ... -
Statistical Analysis of Maximally Similar Sets in Ecological Research
(2018-12)Maximally similar sets (MSSs) are sets of elements that share a neighborhood in a high-dimensional space defined by a symmetric, reflexive similarity relation. Each element of the universe is employed as the kernel of a ... -
Checklist of bees (Hymenoptera: Apoidea) from small diversified vegetable farms in south-western Montana
(2019-01)Background: Over three years (2013-2015), we sampled bees using nets and bowl traps on four diversified vegetable farms in Gallatin County, Montana, USA, as part of a study evaluating the use of wildflower strips for ... -
Variation in the vital rates of an Antarctic marine predator: the role of individual heterogeneity
(2018-10)Variation in life-history traits such as lifespan and lifetime reproductive output is thought to arise, in part, due to among-individual differences in the underlying probabilities of survival and reproduction. However, ... -
Using Satellite Data to Support Fieldwork: Can Species Distributions Be Predicted?
(1996-07)Although species extinction has become a global concern during the last decade, our knowledge of species distribution patterns remains limited. If we don't know where a species has existed historically, we cannot determine ...
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