Midwest Fish & Wildlife Conference 2019

AUTHORS: Emily K Tucker, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

ABSTRACT: Fish and wildlife are commonly studied in isolation from each other. However, collaboration between professionals from the fish and wildlife fields is becoming increasingly important in the face of rapid environmental change. The intersection between fish and wildlife science occurs at the aquatic-terrestrial interface, where the transfer of organic and inorganic material between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems results in an ecosystem linkage. This interace, which is usually associated with riparian zones, has become an area of interest due to the reduction of riparian zones as a result of human influence. The current state of the science of the aquatic-terrestrial interface will be reviewed in this talk. Additionally, the potential ways in which fish and wildlife professionals can work together and learn from each other apart from the aquatic-terrestrial interface will be proposed in order to lay the foundation for the symposium talks to follow.

AUTHORS: Elisabeth B. Webb, U.S. Geological Survey, Missouri Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, School of Natural Resources, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO

ABSTRACT: Wetlands are one of the few ecosystems that provide habitat for both fish and wildlife; therefore, wetland ecosystems are unique in both their ecological communities and the management practices used to promote these communities. As wetlands are biologically and hydrologically diverse, they are highly productive ecosystems, which can meet the life-history needs for a wide a variety of avian, amphibian, mammal and fish species. However, due to the ephemeral nature of wetland habitats and substantial rates of wetland loss across North America, incorporating wetland management practices that provide habitats for and meet the life-history needs of the entire suite of wetland dependent taxa remains a challenge. Here, I will discuss a range of wetland management practices, such as water-level manipulation, prescribed burning and mowing, used to promote specific species or taxa, and the subsequent impacts experienced by other wetland-dependent species. In particular, the phenology of these wetland management practices and hydrogeomorphology of the wetlands in which they are applied, are important considerations in managing wetlands for both fish and wildlife. I will also cover monitoring techniques that can be used to concurrently sample wetlands for both fish and wildlife. Information on fish and wildlife species presence within a wetland is important to not only evaluate the effectiveness of management practices, but to further identify opportunities for future multi-taxa wetland management.

AUTHORS: Scott F Collins, INHS; Colden V Baxter, Idaho State University

ABSTRACT: Pervasive environmental degradation has altered biodiversity at a global scale.  At smaller scales, species extirpations, invasions, and replacements have greatly influenced how ecosystems interact by affecting the exchanges of energy, materials, and organisms.  We examined how species losses and gains affect the exchange of resources (materials and/or organisms) within and among ecosystems.  We specifically consider how changes that occur within an ecosystem may trigger effects that reverberate (e.g., directly, indirectly, via feedbacks) back and forth across ecological boundaries and propagate to multiple habitats or ecosystems connected via exchange of materials and organisms.  Our synthesis provides a cursory overview of ‘openness’ as it has been addressed by community ecologists and then we briefly characterize the conceptual development ecological frameworks used to examine resource exchanges between ecosystems. We then describe multiple case-studies and examine how species losses and gains affect food web structure via resource exchanges between ecosystems, with particular emphasis on effects spanning land-water boundaries. 

AUTHORS: Jeanine M. Refsnider, Henry M. Streby – University of Toledo

ABSTRACT: Studies seeking to conserve habitat critical for the reproductive success of rare species often focus on nesting or spawning habitat.  While such habitats are clearly important components of a species’ ecological requirements, conservation efforts focused solely on habitats used for nesting or spawning, without considering the consequences of oviposition-site choice, are, at best, incomplete.  At worst, inadequate consideration for the fitness outcomes of oviposition-site choice may create ecological traps if animals are attracted to oviposition sites from which juveniles have very low probabilities of survival.  Similarly, management activities such as prescribed burns or selective harvests designed to benefit one species may negatively impact a different species, even if the two species superficially appear to have the same habitat requirements.  These problems illustrate the importance of understanding how multiple life stages of multiple species use a landscape, and how the fitness outcomes of differential habitat use impact population trends.  We are studying three imperiled, flagship species of the Oak Openings Region in Ohio and Michigan: two terrestrial species commonly associated with oak savannah habitat, red-headed woodpeckers and eastern box turtles, and an aquatic species found in flooded prairies and fens, the spotted turtle.  For all three species, we are radio-tracking adults to quantify habitat use and survival; locating and monitoring nests to quantify nest success in different habitat types; and radio-tracking juveniles from those nests to quantify effects of nest habitat on juvenile survival.  From these data, we are creating landscape-scale productivity models to predict how management activity in one habitat patch will impact productivity of all three species in nearby habitat patches.  Our overall goal is to provide land managers with spatially explicit productivity models for terrestrial and aquatic species of high conservation concern that are directly incorporable into adaptive management plans.

AUTHORS: S. Mažeika P. Sullivan, The Ohio State University

ABSTRACT: Streams and their adjacent riparian zones are increasingly recognized as structurally and functionally linked through exchanges of energy, organic matter, and organisms. In particular, recent advances in our understanding of stream-riparian ecosystems have underscored the importance of aquatic-to-terrestrial prey in providing critical energetic subsidies to terrestrial riparian consumers, ranging from arthropods, to birds, to mammals. Contaminants can also move from aquatic to terrestrial ecosystems through these same food-web pathways. Here, I overview a decade of research in the Scioto River basin of Ohio that documents variability in aquatic-to-terrestrial nutritional subsidies and contaminants to terrestrial consumers across a gradient of urban-to-natural landscapes, and in small streams to larger rivers. Using aerial insectivorous birds – which are experiencing serious populations declines across the guild – as a case study, I provide a detailed example of how this research is being used to bridge aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems in specific conservation and management contexts.