For over 30 years, the Alaska Loon Watch (1985−1999) and the Alaska Loon and Grebe Watch (2000−2015) engaged citizen scientist participants to record over 10,000 observations of common Gavia immer and Pacific loons Gavia pacifia at 346 lakes in five sub-regions of Southcentral Alaska. We used generalized linear mixed models to estimate long-term trends in adult loon counts and chick survival and examined environmental variables associated with loon abundance. Adult common loon counts increased in...

Infanticide occurs in a variety of animal species and infanticide risk has large implications for the evolution of behavior. Further, the sex hypothesis of sexual segregation predicts that for species in which infanticide occurs, females with dependent young will avoid males to reduce risk of sexually-selected infanticide. Infanticide risk-avoidance behavior has been studied primarily in social species, but also occurs in some solitary species. We used generalized linear mixed models to determine if space use...

Communities are assembled from species that evolve or colonise a given geographic region, and persist in the face of abiotic conditions and interactions with other species. The evolutionary and colonisation histories of communities are characterised by phylogenetic diversity, while functional diversity is indicative of abiotic and biotic conditions. The relationship between functional and phylogenetic diversity infers whether species functional traits are divergent (differing between related species) or convergent (similar among distantly related species). Biotic interactions...