Ruscena Wiederholt

Everglades Foundation · Science

Florida Bay is a large, subtropical estuary whose salinity varies from yearly and seasonal changes in rainfall and freshwater inflows. Water management changes during the 20th century led to a long-term reduction in inflows that increased mean salinity, and the frequency and severity of hypersalinity. Climate change may exacerbate salinity conditio...

Soil phosphorus (P) built up due to past management practices, legacy P, in the Lake Okeechobee Watershed (LOW) in south-central Florida, U.S.A., is often discussed as the root cause of lake eutrophication. Improvement of the lake’s water quality requires the identification of critical P sources and quantifying their contributions. We performed a g...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0234051.].

The Everglades is a large, complex, and highly managed ecosystem, and its natural hydrologic properties, water quality, soils, flora, and fauna have been significantly altered by the Central and Southern Florida Project. The multi-billion-dollar Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) was authorized in 2000 to restore and protect the Everg...

Economic analyses incorporating ecological and hydrological benefits are useful in guiding and justifying large and complex environmental restoration programs. The Greater Everglades region in Florida, USA is a large area of freshwater and estuarine wetlands adjacent to dense human populations undergoing an extensive restoration effort. Six Evergla...

The Everglades is one of the largest wetland ecosystems in the world covering almost 18,000 square miles from central Florida southward to Florida Bay. Over the 20th century, efforts to drain the Everglades for agriculture and development severely damaged the ecosystem so that today roughly 50% of the historic flow of water through the Everglades h...

Context The greater Everglades region in Florida (USA) is an area of wetlands that has been altered and reduced to 50% of its original area and faces multiple threats. Spatial landscape analysis can help guide a large and complex ecosystem restoration process, involving billions of dollars and multiple groups of stakeholders. Objectives To guide E...

The Everglades is a complex, highly managed ecosystem, and its natural hydrologic properties, water quality, soils, and flora and fauna have been altered by the Central & Southern Florida Project and decades of nutrient pollution. Water storage capacity has been reduced due to drainage and landscape modifications, depriving the southern Everglades...

Using contingent valuation, we estimated willingness to pay (WTP) in Canada, Mexico, and the United States to protect habitat for Northern Pintails (hereafter pintails), a migratory waterfowl species that provides benefits to and requires habitat in the three countries. Our study contributes to research on spatial subsidies by measuring the value o...

We estimated U.S. and Mexican citizens’ willingness to pay (WTP) for protecting habitat for a transborder migratory species, the Mexican free-tailed bat (Tadarida brasiliensis mexicana), using the contingent valuation method. Few contingent valuation surveys have evaluated whether households in one country would pay to protect habitat in another co...

Migratory species provide important benefits to society, but their cross-border conservation poses serious challenges. By quantifying the economic value of ecosystem services (ESs) provided across a species’ range and ecological data on a species’ habitat dependence, we estimate spatial subsidies—how different regions support ESs provided by a spec...

The Everglades is a complex, highly managed ecosystem, and its natural hydrologic properties, water quality, soils, and flora and fauna have been altered by the Central & Southern Florida Project, decades of nutrient pollution, as well as invasive species, and climate change. Water storage capacity has also been diminished due to drainage and lands...

Many metrics exist for quantifying the relative value of habitats and pathways used by highly mobile species. Properly selecting and applying such metrics requires substantial background in mathematics and understanding the relevant management arena. To address this multidimensional challenge, we demonstrate and compare three measurements of habita...

Migratory species provide ecosystem goods and services throughout their annual cycles, often over long distances. Designing effective conservation solutions for migratory species requires knowledge of both species ecology and the socioeconomic context of their migrations. We present a framework built around the concept that migratory species act as...

Quantification of the economic value provided by migratory species can aid in targeting management efforts and funding to locations yielding the greatest benefits to society and species conservation. Here we illustrate a key step in this process by estimating hunting and birding values of the northern pintail (Anas acuta) within primary breeding an...

Drivers of environmental change in one location can have profound effects on ecosystem services and human well-being in distant locations, often across international borders. The telecoupling provides a conceptual framework for describing these interactions—for example, locations can be defined as sending areas (sources of flows of ecosystem servic...

Variation in movement across time and space fundamentally shapes the abundance and distribution of populations. Although a variety of approaches model structured population dynamics, they are limited to specific types of spatially structured populations and lack a unifying framework. Here, we propose a unified network-based framework sufficiently n...

The monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) population in North America has sharply declined over the last two decades. Despite rising concern over the monarch butterfly’s status, no comprehensive study of the factors driving this decline has been conducted. Using partial least-squares regressions and time-series analysis, we investigated climatic and...

The eastern migratory population of monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus plexippus) has declined by >80% within the last two decades. One possible cause of this decline is the loss of ≥1.3 billion stems of milkweed (Asclepias spp.), which monarchs require for reproduction. In an effort to restore monarchs to a population goal established by the US...

Understanding and conserving migratory species requires a method for characterizing the seasonal flow of animals among habitats. Source‐sink theory describes the metapopulation dynamics of species by classifying habitats as population sources (i.e. net contributors) or sinks (i.e. net substractors). Migratory species may have non‐breeding habitats...

In July 2014, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service announced a new policy interpretation for the Endangered Species Act. According to the Act, a species must be listed as threatened or endangered if it is determined to be threatened or endangered in a significant portion of its range. The 1973 law does not define...

Every year, migratory species undertake seasonal movements along different pathways between discrete regions and habitats. The ability to assess the relative demographic contributions of these different habitats and pathways to the species’ overall population dynamics is critical for understanding the ecology of migratory species, and also has prac...

Given the rapid population decline and recent petition for listing of the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus L.) under the Endangered Species Act, an accurate estimate of the Eastern, migratory population size is needed. Because of difficulty in counting individual monarchs, the number of hectares occupied by monarchs in the overwintering area is...

Appendix A

Supplemental Information: Code for calculations

Appendix B

Given the rapid population decline and recent petition for listing of the monarch butterfly ( Danaus plexippus L.) under the Endangered Species Act, an accurate estimate of the Eastern, migratory population size is needed. Because of difficulty in counting individual monarchs, the number of hectares occupied by monarchs in the overwintering area is...

Given the rapid population decline and recent petition for listing of the monarch butterfly ( Danaus plexippus L.) under the Endangered Species Act, an accurate estimate of the Eastern, migratory population size is needed. Because of difficulty in counting individual monarchs, the number of hectares occupied by monarchs in the overwintering area is...

All ecosystems are dotted by salient small natural features that not only characterize them but also significantly add to their biodiversity and functions. These small natural features are prominent but easily missed when ecosystems are described. Caves are one key example of this. Cave ecosystems are underrepresented in conservation planning and i...

Given rapid changes in agricultural practice, it is critical to understand how alterations in ecological, technological, and economic conditions over time and space impact ecosystem services in agroecosystems. Here, we present a benefit transfer approach to quantify cotton pest-control services provided by a generalist predator, the Mexican free-ta...

1. The monarch has undergone considerable population declines over the past decade, and the governments of M exico, C anada, and the U nited S tates have agreed to work together to conserve the species. 2. Given limited resources, understanding where to focus conservation action is key for widespread species like monarchs. To support planning for c...

The Eastern, migratory population of monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus), an iconic North American insect, has declined by ~80% over the last decade. The monarch's multi-generational migration between overwintering grounds in central Mexico and the summer breeding grounds in the northern U.S. and southern Canada is celebrated in all three countr...

Understanding the mechanisms underlying ecosystem resilience - why some systems have an irreversible response to disturbances while others recover - is critical for conserving biodiversity and ecosystem function in the face of global change. Despite the widespread acceptance of a positive relationship between biodiversity and resilience, empirical...

The science of conservation has faced unprecedented challenges in terms of environmental damage and rapid global change in its 40-year history, and environmental problems are only increasing as greater demands are placed on limited natural resources. Conservation science has been adapting to keep pace with these changes. Here, we highlight contempo...

Conservation planning can be challenging due to the need to balance biological concerns about population viability with social concerns about the benefits biodiversity provide to society, often while operating under a limited budget. Methods and tools that help prioritize conservation actions are critical for the management of at-risk species. Here...

AimBiologists increasingly recognize the roles of humans in ecosystems. Subsequently, many have argued that biodiversity conservation must be extended to environments that humans have shaped directly. Yet popular biogeographical frameworks such as biomes do not incorporate human land use, limiting their relevance to future conservation planning. ‘A...

Critics of the market-based, ecosystem services approach to biodiversity conservation worry that volatile market conditions and technological substitutes will diminish the value of ecosystem services and obviate the "economic benefits" arguments for conservation. To explore the effects of market forces and substitutes on service values, we assessed...

The annual migration of monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) has high cultural value and recent surveys indicate monarch populations are declining. Protecting migratory species is complex because they cross international borders and depend on multiple regions. Understanding how much, and where, humans place value on migratory species can facilita...

The migration of animals across long distances and between multiple habitats presents a major challenge for conservation. For the migratory Mexican free-tailed bat (Tadarida brasiliensis mexicana), these challenges include identifying and protecting migratory routes and critical roosts in two countries, the United States and Mexico. Knowledge and c...

Migratory species provide diverse ecosystem services to people, but these values have seldom been estimated rangewide for a single species. In this article, we summarize visitation and consumer surplus for recreational visitors to viewing sites for the Mexican free-tailed bat (Tadarida brasiliensis mexicana) throughout the Southwestern United State...

Background/Question/Methods One of the greatest challenges for bat conservation is that many species migrate across international borders and between habitats with varying levels of protection. However, bat migration remains poorly understood due to limited data and difficulties in tracking migrants. An understanding of migratory routes and major...

Background/Question/Methods Amphibian populations are experiencing declines worldwide and up to one third of all amphibian species are estimated to be threatened. Climate change is hypothesized to be one of the principal causes driving these declines as the behavioral, physiological, and ecological characteristics of amphibians make them especial...

Given the threatened status of many primate species, the impacts of global warming on primate reproduction and, consequently, population growth should be of concern. We examined relations between climatic variability and birth seasonality, offspring production, and infant sex ratios in two ateline primates, northern muriquis, and woolly monkeys. In...

Overexploitation of wildlife populations occurs across the humid tropics and is a significant threat to the long-term survival of large-bodied primates. To investigate the impacts of hunting on primates and ways to mitigate them, we developed a spatially explicit, individual-based model for a landscape that included hunted and un-hunted areas. We u...

Many primate species are severely threatened, but little is known about the effects of global warming and the associated intensification of El Niño events on primate populations. Here, we document the influences of the El Niño southern oscillation (ENSO) and hemispheric climatic variability on the population dynamics of four genera of ateline (neot...

Background/Question/Methods Overexploitation of game populations occurs across the humid tropics and is a significant threat to large-bodied mammalian and primate populations. Consequently, high levels of hunting can dramatically reduce large-bodied primate abundance in tropical forests, which is of conservation concern as globally, up to one third...