SUMMARY 1. Surveillance is critical for the early detection of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, and weighted surveillance uses heterogeneity in risk of infection to increase the sampling efficiency. 2. We apply a Bayesian approach to estimate weights for 16 surveillance classes of white-tailed deer in Wisconsin, USA, relative to hunter-harvested yearling males. We use these weights to conduct a surveillance program for detecting chronic wasting disease (CWD) in white-tailed deer at Shenandoah National Park...

A hallmark of industrialization is the construction of dams for water management and roads for transportation, leading to fragmentation of aquatic ecosystems. Many nations are striving to address both maintenance backlogs and mitigation of environmental impacts as their infrastructure ages. Here, we test whether accounting for road repair needs could offer opportunities to boost conservation efficiency by piggybacking connectivity restoration projects on infrastructure maintenance. Using optimization models to align fish passage restoration sites with likely...

Fragmentation of wildlife populations is increasing on a global scale and understanding current population genetic structure, genetic diversity, and genetic connectivity is key to informing wildlife management and conservation. We genotyped 992 pumas (Puma concolor) at 42 previously developed microsatellite loci and identified 10 genetic populations throughout the states of California and Nevada, USA. Although some genetic populations had large effective population sizes, others were small and inbred. Genetic diversity was extremely variable (heterozygosity, uHe...