Context The amount and composition of phytochemicals in forage plants influences habitat quality for wild herbivores. However, evaluating forage quality at fine resolutions across broad spatial extents (i.e., foodscapes) is challenging. Unmanned aerial systems (UAS) provide an avenue for bridging this gap in spatial scale. Objectives We evaluated the potential for UAS technology to accurately predict nutritional quality of sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) across landscapes. We mapped seasonal forage quality across two sites in Idaho, USA,...

The images used to make these data products were collected at Duncan Saddle, approximately one hour south of Mountain Home, Idaho, in August 2021. We used a DJI Mavic 2 Pro with Map Pilot Pro software to capture imagery over the area of interest. The imagery was collected in a crossgrid pattern at 44m above ground level; the resulting imagery have a ground resolution of 1cm/pixel. The images were processed and the products created in...

The images used to make these data products were collected at and near Castle Rocks State Park, Idaho, in June 2021 and September 2021. We used a DJI Mavic 2 Pro with Map Pilot Pro software to capture imagery over four sites of interest. The imagery was collected in a crossgrid pattern at 40m above ground level; the resulting imagery have a ground resolution of 1cm/pixel. The images were processed and the products created in...

UCM sites. Snow depth, soil moisture and soil temperature are measured near the Merced Grove, Gin Flat, Smoky Jack Creek, and Olmsted Quarry with a distributed array of 6-7 sensor nodes at each location. Snow depth is measured in the open, at the drip edge and under canopies, as well as 3-4 other sites representative of an area of 1-2 hectares. Soil moisture and temperature are measured at 10, 30, 60 and 90 cm depths...

This data set includes raw RGB (red, green, blue) and multispectral (5-band) digital imagery and processed data products collected 2022-06-10 at the 2007-COLD wildfire boundary (FireCode: ID4311811531420070801, Welty and Jeffries 2020) due east of Mountain Home Idaho and due north of Glenns Ferry Idaho, approximately one hour southeast of Boise Idaho off Interstate-84. We used a DJI Mavic 2 Pro with Hasselblad 20MP sensor (RGB) with Map Pilot Pro software and DJI Phantom 4 Multispectral...

This data set includes three-years (2020-2022) of demographic (survival, growth, reproduction) data, one-year of allometric data, and seed germination data over a three-year period for Camassia quamash at the Camas Prairie Centennial Marsh near Hill City, Idaho, USA. The three-year data set also includes individual-level annual measurements of soil moisture, C. quamash percent cover, percent cover of all live vegetation, and percent cover of surrounding non-native Alopecurus arundinaceus biomass and necromass. The data was collected...

Many insects possess conspicuous external circular ring markings that resemble the eye of a vertebrate. These ‘eyespots’ typically function to startle or otherwise deter predators, but few studies have examined how eyespots have evolved. We study the evolution of the posterior larval eyespot in the charismatic New World hawkmoth genus Eumorpha. While Eumorpha has a range of posterior larval eyespot shapes and sizes, little is known of how this trait has evolved because phylogenetic relationships...

When consuming plants, herbivores must deal with both low nutritional quality from cell wall constituents and potentially toxic plant secondary metabolites, which are often inversely related. Herbivores that consume a highly nutritious, but chemically defended plant, may consume high levels of toxins that require energy for detoxification. Alternatively, herbivores may avoid consuming high levels of toxins by consuming a diverse diet that may be lower in overall nutritional quality. In this study, we assessed the...

1.Assessing habitat quality is a primary goal of ecologists. However, evaluating habitat features that relate strongly to habitat quality at fine-scale resolutions across broad-scale extents is challenging. Unmanned aerial systems (UAS) provide an avenue for bridging the gap between relatively high spatial resolution, low spatial extent field-based habitat quality measurements and lower spatial resolution, higher spatial extent satellite-based remote sensing. Our goal in this study was to evaluate the potential for UAS structure from motion...

Artificial nightlight is increasingly recognized as an important environmental disturbance that influences the habitats and fitness of numerous species. However, its effects on wide-ranging vertebrates and their interactions remain unclear. Light pollution has the potential to amplify land-use change, and as such, answering the question of how this sensory stimulant affects behavior and habitat use of species valued for their ecological roles and economic impacts is critical for conservation and land-use planning. Here, we combined...

Telomere length dynamics are an established biomarker of health and aging in animals. The study of telomeres in numerous species has been facilitated by methods to measure telomere length by real-time quantitative PCR (qPCR). In this method, telomere length is determined by quantifying the amount of telomeric DNA repeats in a sample and normalizing this to the total amount of genomic DNA. This normalization requires the development of genomic reference primers suitable for qPCR, which...

Identifying population genetic structure is useful for inferring evolutionary process as well as defining subspecies boundaries and/or conservation units that can aid in species management. The American kestrel (Falco sparverius) is a widespread species with two described North American subspecies, (F. s. sparverius and F. s. paulus), the latter in the southeastern United States and the former across the remainder of its distribution. In many parts of their range, American kestrels have been declining, but...

1. Altered animal distributions are a consequence of human expansion and development. Anthropogenic noise can be an important predictor of abundance declines near human infrastructure, yet more information is needed to understand noise impacts at the spatial and temporal scales necessary to alter populations. 2. Energy development and associated anthropogenic noise are globally pervasive, and expanding. For example, 600,000 new natural gas wells have been drilled across central North America in less than twenty years....

Remotely sensed land cover datasets have been increasingly employed in studies of wildlife habitat use. However, meaningful interpretation of these datasets is dependent on how accurately they estimate habitat features that are important to wildlife. We evaluated the accuracy of the GAP dataset, which is commonly used to classify broad cover categories (e.g., vegetation communities) and LANDFIRE datasets, which are classify narrower cover categories (e.g., plant species) and structural features of vegetation. To evaluate accuracy,...

One of the key objectives in biological research is understanding how evolutionary processes have produced Earth's diversity. A critical step towards revealing these processes is an investigation of evolutionary tradeoffs – that is, the opposing pressures of multiple selective forces. For millennia, nocturnal moths have had to balance successful flight, as they search for mates or host plants, with evading bat predators. However, the potential for evolutionary trade-offs between wing shape and body size are...

How intensely animals use habitat features depends on their functional properties (i.e., how the feature influences fitness) and the spatial and temporal scale considered. For herbivores, habitat use is expected to reflect the competing risks of starvation, predation, and thermal stress, but the relative influence of each functional property is expected to vary in space and time. We examined how a dietary and habitat specialist, the pygmy rabbit (Brachylagus idahoensis), used these functional properties of...

Chirita umbrophila C.Y.Wu ex H.W.Li is a species endemic to Yunnan, China, and its exact systematic position remains a mystery since it was treated as a species with uncertain generic affiliation in the taxonomic revision of Chirita Buch.-Ham. ex Don in 1985. In the present study, the phylogenetic relationships between C. umbrophila and its allied species were inferred using two nuclear ribosomal DNA regions (ETS and ITS) and three chloroplast regions (rpl16, rps16, and trnL-F)....

Does drought stress in temperate Pacific Northwest, USA, grasslands alters the relationship between plant structure and function? Here we report data from an experiment focusing on growth form and species traits that affect the critical functions of water- and nutrient-use efficiency in prairie and pasture plant communities. A total of 139 individuals of 12 species (11 genera and four families) were sampled in replicated plots maintained for three years across a 520 km latitudinal gradient...

The data set contains the transcript annotations for the assembled IDT3 transcriptome. The trinotate annotation file provides an assembled transcript ID, gene name, how the gene was identified (the trinotate pipeline contains several methods of gene identification), and gene ontology information. The accompanying BAM alignment files contain the read mapping data for transcriptome samples used in the differential gene expression experiment. Raw read, BAM alignment and assembled IDT3 transcriptome data files are available from the...

Biological radiations provide unique opportunities to understand the evolution of biodiversity. One such radiation is the pepper plant family Piperaceae, an early-diverging and mega-diverse lineage that could serve as a model to study the diversification of angiosperms. However, traditional genetic markers lack sufficient variation for such studies, and testing hypotheses on poorly resolved phylogenetic frameworks becomes challenging. Limited genomic data is available for Piperaceae, which contains two of the largest genera of angiosperms, Piper (2,172...

Seasonal migration is a dynamic natural phenomenon that allows organisms to exploit favorable habitats across the annual cycle. While the morphological, physiological, and behavioral changes associated with migratory behavior are well characterized, the genetic basis of migration and its link to endogenous biological timekeeping pathways is poorly understood. Historically, genome-wide research has focused on genes of large effect, whereas many genes of small effect may work together to regulate complex traits like migratory behavior. Here,...

In wild birds, the proximate and ultimate factors that affect circulating carotenoid concentrations remain poorly understood. We studied variation in plasma carotenoid concentrations across several scales: annual, seasonal, pair, territory and individual, and evaluated whether plasma carotenoid concentrations explained reproductive outcome of wild American kestrels (Falco sparverius). We sampled plasma carotenoid concentrations of 99 female and 80 male incubating kestrels from April to June in 2008 to 2012. Plasma carotenoid concentrations were explained by an...

Apex predators may influence carnivore communities through the suppression of competitively dominant mesopredators, however they also provide carrion subsidies that could influence foraging and competition among sympatric mesopredators when small prey is scarce. We assessed coyote Canis latrans and red fox Vulpes vulpes winter diet overlap and composition from scats collected in two study areas with >3-fold difference in grey wolf Canis lupus density due to a wolf control program. We hypothesized that differences in...

Novel anthropogenic noise has received considerable attention in behavioral ecology, but natural acoustic environments have largely been ignored as ecological niche axes. In riparian sites, within an arid sagebrush steppe ecosystem, we use a natural range of acoustic environments along with experimentally broadcasted whitewater river noise to test our hypothesis that river noise is an important niche axis. We show that orb-weaving spiders (Araneidae and Tetragnathidae) are more abundant in high sound level environments, but...

Context: Forest cover change analyses have revealed net forest gain in many tropical regions. While most analyses have focused solely on forest cover, trees outside forests are vital components of landscape integrity. Quantifying regional-scale patterns of tree cover change, including non-forest trees, could benefit forest and landscape restoration (FLR) efforts. Objectives: We analyzed tree cover change in Southwestern Panama to quantify: 1) patterns of change from 1998-2014, 2) differences in rates of change between forest...