@article{teitsworth_humphries_archambault_pacifici_2024, title={Capital to Coast: Primary Drivers of Distribution in the Secretive and Data-Limited Neuse River Waterdog<i> (Necturus lewisi)</i>}, volume={112}, ISSN={["2766-1520"]}, DOI={10.1643/h2023036}, abstractNote={The lack of demographic data for many protected species often means that threats are poorly understood during recovery planning, and this results in difficulty defining sufficient metrics for assessing progress on recovery actions. The Neuse River Waterdog (Necturus lewisi) is a federally protected aquatic salamander endemic to the Neuse and Tar-Pamlico River basins of central and eastern North Carolina. It has quietly declined during four decades of intense urbanization, but the specific drivers of decline are unclear because there are no demographic data and only limited detection/non-detection information available. Our first objective was to clarify the drivers of decline by synthesizing the current knowledge of the hypothesized threats to N. lewisi. Because preexisting demographic data are lacking, we used prior natural history research and studies of ecologically similar species to develop hypotheses for the observed declines in occurrence. Our second objective was to update the knowledge of the species' current distribution throughout its historical range and then test our hypothesized threats using new occurrence data. We conducted detection/non-detection surveys across 116 locations throughout the species' historical range in two consecutive winter seasons (2018–2019 and 2019–2020) and modeled the effects of local and landscape variables representing three broad threat categories (pollution, flow suppression, and land use/land cover) using an occupancy modeling approach. We fit models representing all biologically relevant combinations of variables simultaneously, recognizing that threats are not independent in their effect. Dominant substrate type was the best predictor of occurrence and was negatively associated with the transition from cobble to silt (P < 0.05). Our analysis most supported the hypothesis that observed declines in the occurrence of N. lewisi are a delayed result of sedimentation-induced recruitment limitation. Uncertainty in the mechanism of decline remains because recruitment limitation could not be directly estimated with two years of occurrence data, yet this interpretation gained through an understanding of the species' underlying biology and current distribution contributes to the knowledge about present threats and will help guide and evaluate future recovery actions for this protected and narrowly endemic aquatic species.}, number={2}, journal={ICHTHYOLOGY AND HERPETOLOGY}, author={Teitsworth, Eric W. and Humphries, W. Jeffrey and Archambault, Jennifer M. and Pacifici, Krishna}, year={2024}, month={Jul}, pages={196–209} }
 @article{davis_munoz_amburgey_dinsmore_teitsworth_miller_2023, title={Multistate model to estimate sex-specific dispersal rates and distances for a wetland-breeding amphibian population}, volume={14}, ISSN={["2150-8925"]}, DOI={10.1002/ecs2.4345}, abstractNote={AbstractHow animals move across space and time in heterogeneous landscapes has important implications for the conservation of imperiled and dispersal‐limited taxa, such as amphibians. Wetland‐breeding amphibians are thought to exhibit strong site fidelity, but there is growing evidence that many species are more vagile than previously assumed. Few studies have quantified breeding dispersal probabilities or distances while also accounting for observational uncertainty, which means that resultant estimates could be biased or confounded with sampling intensity and other demographic rates (e.g., site‐ and time‐specific detection and survival probabilities). Here, we analyze data from a 6‐year capture–mark–recapture study on adult spotted salamanders (Ambystoma maculatum) conducted at 12 wetlands in central Pennsylvania to estimate population dynamics and population structure at multiple scales. We used a multistate, hidden Markov estimator to quantify sex‐specific site fidelity and breeding dispersal as a function of Euclidean distance between wetlands while accounting for imperfect detection. We estimated short‐timescale movements (i.e., those that occur within a single breeding season) and longer timescale movements (i.e., those that occur among breeding seasons) to determine if dispersal rates and distances differed. We found that interannual site fidelity of males varied among wetlands and was positively associated with population density. Females exhibited higher interannual site fidelity and dispersed further than males between breeding seasons. Within breeding seasons, we found that up to 6% of males dispersed to a new wetland each day. Our study is the first to directly compare amphibian breeding dispersal probabilities and distances at multiple scales and provides a robust framework for improving inference on the spatial and temporal patterns of amphibian movement.}, number={1}, journal={ECOSPHERE}, author={Davis, Courtney L. and Munoz, David J. and Amburgey, Staci M. and Dinsmore, Carli R. and Teitsworth, Eric W. and Miller, David A. W.}, year={2023}, month={Jan} }