Sunday, September 13, 2009

Mara River Flows Newsletters

We have been circulating a newsletter in house within our research community for the last few months. They have been very well received and we have been encouraged to share them within our entire network. So...here you go. All our newsletters will appear under the "Mara River Flows Newsletter" section which is directly under the "About us". We will craft them at the end of each month to provide a nice recap of all we've been up to the previous month.

Our most recent newsletter (August 2008) has an interesting story about one of our now infamous breakdowns. Here you can see a picture of us being hooked up to the back of a leaking petroleum gas tanker!


Check them out and give us some feedback.

Mara Wetlands

The Mara River Wetlands are beautiful...

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Detection of American alligators in isolated, seasonal wetlands

That is the title of the paper Amanda wrote that is published in Applied Herpetology 6 (2009).

Here is the abstract:
Although the American alligator has been well-studied in coastal marshes and large reservoirs, very few studies have taken place in the isolated, seasonal wetlands that occur within the inland portion of the alligator’s range. Understanding alligator populations in these systems is important because, although they are subject to the same management strategies and regulations as their more well-studied counterparts, they may have markedly different population dynamics and densities. Additionally, understanding patterns of alligator presence in isolated, seasonal wetlands is important to understanding how alligators may affect these critical habitats as ecosystem engineers. However, survey methods designed for large, open water systems may not work in these small, vegetated wetlands, and their efficacy in this habitat has yet to be documented. We conducted eyeshine surveys for alligators along walking transects through isolated, seasonal wetlands in southwest Georgia. We used a double-observer method with a Huggins closed capture analysis to determine the detection probability of this method, to model the effects of observer and wetland type on that parameter and to estimate abundance. We found that detection probability for eyeshine surveys under the best-supported model was 57%, between 2 and 5 times higher than documented in other habitats. We then compared eyeshine surveys with systematic trapping to ascertain which components of the population were more likely to be detected by each method. Both methods were effective in detecting a range of size classes in the wetlands; however, the two methods were most effective when used in concert. Wildlife biologists studying population trends and establishing harvest quotas can use this information to design surveys in the inland portion of the alligator’s range.

Get yourself a copy of it and let her know what a wonderful job she did!