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Keyword: community ecology

Contrasting cascades: Insectivorous birds increase pine but not parasitic mistletoe growth

Publications Posted on: December 18, 2019
Intraguild predation occurs when top predators feed upon both intermediate predators and herbivores. Intraguild predators may thus have little net impact on herbivore abundance. Variation among communities in the strength of trophic cascades (the indirect effects of predators on plants) may be due to differing frequencies of intraguild predation.

Geographic analysis of species richness and community attributes of forest birds from survey data in the Mid-Atlantic Integrated Assessment Region

Publications Posted on: December 16, 2019
Species richness of local communities is a state variable commonly used in community ecology and conservation biology. Investigation of spatial and temporal variations in richness and identification of factors associated with these variations form a basis for specifying management plans, evaluating these plans, and for testing hypotheses of theoretical interest.

Celebrating 30 years of the Fire Effects Information System (FEIS)

Science Spotlights Posted on: November 10, 2015
Thirty years ago, Rocky Mountain Research Station scientist William (Bill) Fischer proposed a highly innovative computer system to provide managers with information about the effects of prescribed fire. Technology has changed radically since Fischer originally envisioned a computer program to provide fire effects information electronically. The FEIS user interface now enables readers to search using many criteria, including maps, and it connects information from all three FEIS products - Species Reviews, Fire Studies, and Fire Regimes.

Bird diversity and environmental heterogeneity in North America: A test of the area-heterogeneity trade-off

Publications Posted on: September 03, 2015
Aim: Deterministic niche theory predicts that increasing environmental heterogeneity increases species richness. In contrast, a recent stochastic model suggests that heterogeneity has a unimodal effect on species richness since high levels of heterogeneity reduce the effective area available per species, thereby increasing the likelihood of stochastic extinction (the ‘area-heterogeneity trade-off’).

Plant invasions: How do mild-mannered plants transform into superinvaders?

Media Gallery Posted on: July 30, 2015
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Plant invasions: How do mild-mannered plants transform into superinvaders?

Projects Posted on: May 19, 2015
For over 10 years, Rocky Mountain Research Station scientists and their partners have engaged in research to 1) determine the causes underlying plant invasions, 2) identify invader impacts in native systems, and 3) improve the efficacy of invasive plant mitigation efforts.

Fire Effects Information System (FEIS): Syntheses of information on fire effects and fire regimes

Projects Posted on: April 28, 2015
The Fire Effects Information System (FEIS) provides scientific information for resource management, restoration, rehabilitation, and fire management. FEIS continues to improve its service to managers by providing new and updated products and a new user interface is currently under development.

SimAssem for processing and/or simulating species assemblage data

Tools Posted on: September 17, 2014
SimAssem is a tool for investigating the performances of species richness estimators across widely ranging assemblages and survey designs. SimAssem also processes existing encounter data and formats existing and simulated encounter data for other programs.

Performance of species richness estimators across assemblage types and survey parameters

Publications Posted on: August 07, 2014
Aim: A raw count of the species encountered across surveys usually underestimates species richness. Statistical estimators are often less biased. Nonparametric estimators of species richness are widely considered the least biased, but no particular estimator has consistently performed best.

Program SimAssem: software for simulating species assemblages and estimating species richness

Publications Posted on: September 24, 2013
1. Species richness, the number of species in a defined area, is the most frequently used biodiversity measure. Despite its intuitive appeal and conceptual simplicity, species richness is often difficult to quantify, even in well surveyed areas, because of sampling limitations such as survey effort and species detection probability.

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