RECORD
Pond-Breeding Amphibians in a Highly Modified Landscape: Habitat Modeling, Landscape Genetics, and Predictions of Landscape Change
- Title:
- Pond-Breeding Amphibians in a Highly Modified Landscape: Habitat Modeling, Landscape Genetics, and Predictions of Landscape Change
- Creator:
- Goldberg, Caren S.
- Date Created:
- 2009-12
- Description:
- In the second half of the 20th century, landscape change on the terrestrial surface of the Earth occurred at an unprecedented rate, leading to habitat loss and degradation for thousands of species. Amphibians are currently the most imperiled of all vertebrate taxa and are often considered good indicators of ecosystem function because of their vulnerability to habitat degradation Despite this, several native amphibian species currently persist in the highly modified Palouse Prairie ecoregion of North America. We modeled the landscape associations of the most common of these species at a home range and population connectivity scale, predicted how this landscape is likely to change in the future, and assessed what the impacts of those changes would be on the persistence of these amphibian populations. First, we developed a novel survey-based method for predicting landscape change, compared it to a standard trend-based model, and found that rural housing units were predicted to increase by 31%, forests to decrease by 11%, agricultural lands by 7%, and grasslands by 4% over the following decade. We then developed habitat models for Columbia spotted frogs (Rana luteiventris), Pacific treefrogs (Pseudacris regilla), and long-toed salamanders (Ambystoma macrodactylum) which indicated that forest practices will likely to be detrimental to long-toed salamanders and beneficial to Pacific treefrogs, and that Columbia spotted frogs had a high level of vulnerability to predicted development patterns. Next, we used an empirical example from this area to show how removing full siblings from larval population genetic could reduce bias. Finally, we used a comparative landscape genetic approach to model the connectivity of Columbia spotted frogs and long-toed salamanders. For both species, urban and rural developed land cover provided the highest landscape resistances. Resistance values for long-toed salamanders followed a moisture gradient, with forest providing the lowest resistance. For Columbia spotted frogs, however, agriculture provided the least resistance, with grassland and forest associated with much higher resistance values. These results emphasize the need for species-specific data to inform management and conservation planning, and also contribute to a growing body of work on the landscape associations and multiple dispersal strategies of pond-breeding amphibians globally.
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Subjects:
- UIEF landscape change land cover change amphibians habitat loss climate change ecosystem dynamics indicator species wildlife
- Location:
- UIEF
- Latitude:
- 46.869607
- Longitude:
- -116.733856
- Publisher:
- ProQuest Dissertations Publishing
- Department:
- Forest, Rangeland, and Fire Sciences
- Type:
- Text
Source
- Preferred Citation:
- "Pond-Breeding Amphibians in a Highly Modified Landscape: Habitat Modeling, Landscape Genetics, and Predictions of Landscape Change", UIEF Research Exchange, University of Idaho Library Digital Collections, https://www.lib.uidaho.edu/digital/uief/items/uief_0205.html
Rights
- Rights:
- In copyright, educational use permitted.
- Standardized Rights:
- http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/