A Strategy for Monitoring and Managing Declines in an Amphibian Community

Grant, Evan H. Campbell; Zipkin, Elise F.; Nichols, James D.; Campbell, Jillian

doi:10.1111/cobi.12137

Cited by 29 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…We note, however, that Chandler and Clark (2014) modeled large-scale population dynamics by integrating capture-recapture and detection/non-detection data. Therefore, if the objective is to document persistence, colonization, and reproduction following reintroductions at a large spatial scale, leveraging detection/non-detection data using occupancy models may be a more pragmatic and reliable tactic (Grant et al 2013, Peterson and Shea 2014, Chandler et al 2015. Such an approach could potentially be integrated with ours to leverage intensive monitoring data from a handful of localized sites and less expensive detection/non-detection data to make landscape-level inferences concerning amphibian population dynamics.…”

Section: Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

A new parameterization for integrated population models to document amphibian reintroductions

Duarte

Pearl

Adams

et al. 2017

Ecological Applications

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Managers are increasingly implementing reintroduction programs as part of a global effort to alleviate amphibian declines. Given uncertainty in factors affecting populations and a need to make recurring decisions to achieve objectives, adaptive management is a useful component of these efforts. A major impediment to the estimation of demographic rates often used to parameterize and refine decision-support models is that life-stage-specific monitoring data are frequently sparse for amphibians. We developed a new parameterization for integrated population models to match the ecology of amphibians and capitalize on relatively inexpensive monitoring data to document amphibian reintroductions. We evaluate the capability of this model by fitting it to Oregon spotted frog (Rana pretiosa) monitoring data collected from 2007 to 2014 following their reintroduction within the Klamath Basin, Oregon, USA. The number of egg masses encountered and the estimated adult and metamorph abundances generally increased following reintroduction. We found that survival probability from egg to metamorph ranged from 0.01 in 2008 to 0.09 in 2009 and was not related to minimum spring temperatures, metamorph survival probability ranged from 0.13 in 2010-2011 to 0.86 in 2012-2013 and was positively related to mean monthly temperatures (logit-scale slope = 2.37), adult survival probability was lower for founders (0.40) than individuals recruited after reintroduction (0.56), and the mean number of egg masses per adult female was 0.74. Our study is the first to test hypotheses concerning Oregon spotted frog egg-to-metamorph and metamorph-to-adult transition probabilities in the wild and document their response at multiple life stages following reintroduction. Furthermore, we provide an example to illustrate how the structure of our integrated population model serves as a useful foundation for amphibian decision-support models within adaptive management programs. The integration of multiple, but related, data sets has an advantage of being able to estimate complex ecological relationships across multiple life stages, offering a modeling framework that accommodates uncertainty, enforces parsimony, and ensures all model parameters can be confronted with monitoring data.

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Section: Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

A new parameterization for integrated population models to document amphibian reintroductions

Duarte

Pearl

Adams

et al. 2017

Ecological Applications

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“…) as well as understanding individual species‐level responses to landscape/habitat features (Tingley and Beissinger ) and management or conservation actions (Grant et al. ; Sauer et al. ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Guidelines for a priori grouping of species in hierarchical community models

Pacifici

Zipkin

Collazo

et al. 2014

Ecology and Evolution

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Recent methodological advances permit the estimation of species richness and occurrences for rare species by linking species-level occurrence models at the community level. The value of such methods is underscored by the ability to examine the influence of landscape heterogeneity on species assemblages at large spatial scales. A salient advantage of community-level approaches is that parameter estimates for data-poor species are more precise as the estimation process “borrows” from data-rich species. However, this analytical benefit raises a question about the degree to which inferences are dependent on the implicit assumption of relatedness among species. Here, we assess the sensitivity of community/group-level metrics, and individual-level species inferences given various classification schemes for grouping species assemblages using multispecies occurrence models. We explore the implications of these groupings on parameter estimates for avian communities in two ecosystems: tropical forests in Puerto Rico and temperate forests in northeastern United States. We report on the classification performance and extent of variability in occurrence probabilities and species richness estimates that can be observed depending on the classification scheme used. We found estimates of species richness to be most precise and to have the best predictive performance when all of the data were grouped at a single community level. Community/group-level parameters appear to be heavily influenced by the grouping criteria, but were not driven strictly by total number of detections for species. We found different grouping schemes can provide an opportunity to identify unique assemblage responses that would not have been found if all of the species were analyzed together. We suggest three guidelines: (1) classification schemes should be determined based on study objectives; (2) model selection should be used to quantitatively compare different classification approaches; and (3) sensitivity of results to different classification approaches should be assessed. These guidelines should help researchers apply hierarchical community models in the most effective manner.

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“…Climate change is predicted to increase the hydrologic variability of wetlands (Grant et al. ) and transform a greater percentage of wetlands from permanent and semi‐permanent status to an ephemeral status (Lee et al. ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multistate occupancy modeling improves understanding of amphibian breeding dynamics in the Greater Yellowstone Area

Gould

Ray

Bailey

et al. 2019

Ecological Applications

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Discerning the determinants of species occurrence across landscapes is fundamental to their conservation and management. In spatially and climatologically complex landscapes, explaining the dynamics of occurrence can lead to improved understanding of short‐ vs. long‐term trends and offer novel insight on local vs. regional change. We examined the changes in occupancy for two species of anurans with different life histories over a decade using hundreds of wetland sites in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. To account for the joint dynamics of wetland drying and amphibian breeding, we adopted a multistate occupancy model as a means to investigate mechanistic relationships of observed occurrence patterns with climatological drivers of wetland hydrologic variability. This approach allowed us to decompose occupancy dynamics into habitat changes caused by wetland drying and amphibian breeding activity, conditional on available water and previous breeding state. Over our 10‐yr time series, we observed considerable variability in climate drivers and the proportion of dry wetlands. Boreal chorus frogs (Pseudacris maculata) were more responsive to changes in wetland inundation status than Columbia spotted frogs (Rana luteiventris), as indicated by higher breeding colonization probabilities under favorable (wet) conditions. Both species had high probabilities of breeding persistence in permanently inundated wetlands with prior breeding. Despite the absence of multi‐year drought in our time series, mechanistic relationships described here offer insights on how future climate variation may result in reduced and/or shifted occurrence patterns for pond‐breeding anurans in the Greater Yellowstone Area. Further, our modeling approach may prove valuable in evaluating determinants of occurrence for other species that are dependent on wetlands or other dynamic habitats.

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A Strategy for Monitoring and Managing Declines in an Amphibian Community

Cited by 29 publications

References 28 publications

A new parameterization for integrated population models to document amphibian reintroductions

A new parameterization for integrated population models to document amphibian reintroductions

Guidelines for a priori grouping of species in hierarchical community models

Multistate occupancy modeling improves understanding of amphibian breeding dynamics in the Greater Yellowstone Area

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