Climatic Variation and Age Ratios in Bighorn Sheep and Mountain Goats in the Greater Yellowstone Area

Using management data regularly collected by state and federal agencies, we indexed recruitment rates of bighorn sheep and mountain goats in the Greater Yellowstone Area (GYA) by calculating young : adult ratios. Annual and long term regional climatic conditions were indexed using data from Natural Resource Conservation Service Snotel sensors across the GYA. Linear regression models were used to assess hypotheses that recruitment rates in bighorn sheep and mountain goats in the GYA were associated with annual and regional variation in climatic conditions. The initial dataset consisted of 685 bighorn sheep lamb : ewe ratios from 21 herds since 1960 and 184 mountain goat kid : adult ratios from 18 herds since 1966. After censoring data, 369 bighorn sheep records remained, which were split into three seasonal subsets, and 123 mountain goat records remained in a single dataset. Findings suggest that recruitment rates in bighorn sheep and mountain goats were associated with annual variation in both pre-birth and post-birth climatic conditions, interacting with long term regional climate conditions. Additionally, strong interactions were found between precipitation during the birthing season and winter severity. Collectively, these findings suggest that recruitment in bighorn sheep and mountain goat populations in the GYA may be sensitive to changes in future climate conditions and that the response may vary regionally across the GYA

What Does it all Mean? Interpreting Respiratory Pathogen Survey Results for Bighorn Sheep Management

Respiratory disease has been a major challenge for bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) conservation and is a dominant factor influencing management decisions of bighorn sheep, however; much about the disease process remains unknown.  Decades of research have compiled considerable evidence that domestic sheep and goats can transmit the disease to bighorn sheep as well as strong evidence for several bacterial organisms as causative agents for the disease.  However, there are examples of bighorn populations hosting the agents linked to respiratory disease with little demographic side-effects.  Further, the immediate cause of disease events often remains undetermined. Two general hypotheses exist to explain observed disease events in wildlife populations: 1) A disease event is caused by introduction of a novel pathogen from neighboring or sympatric host populations or; 2) A disease event is caused by certain conditions triggering endemic pathogens to become virulent to the host.  While the extent to which these competing hypotheses explain observed respiratory disease events in bighorn sheep is unknown, the appropriate management actions to address disease due to these different processes are very different.  Effectively addressing these hypotheses and better understanding the major causes of observed respiratory disease events is a challenge and requires rigorous and repeated pathogen sampling in bighorn populations both affected and seemingly unaffected by respiratory disease.  This presentation provides a brief background of bighorn respiratory disease, highlights the challenges of interpreting respiratory pathogen survey results to inform management as well as recent advances in respiratory pathogen research that have promise to help further inform management decisions

Correlates of Recruitment in Montana Bighorn Sheep Populations: An Initiative to Synthesize Montana Bighorn Sheep Recruitment Data and Gain Biological Insight

Bighorn sheep (Ovis Canadensis) populations in Montana have been strongly affectedby disease outbreaks in recent years, resulting in the death of approximately 1500 bighorns as well as depressed recruitment rates in some affected herds. The ecology of these disease outbreaks is not well understood and there have been several proposals for a state-wide research project addressing disease ecology of bighorns in Montana. Such a project is a large investment and any extra knowledge of the bighorn populations that can be gained from existing data would improve study design and enhance the success of any future research effort. Last year we used management data to index bighorn recruitment rates of 23 bighorn herds in the Greater Yellowstone Area (GYA) and found strong correlations between recruitment and both annual and regional climate patterns. This year we have received funding from Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks to conduct a similar analysis of bighorn recruitment rates across Montana. The planned analysis will investigate potential correlations between bighorn recruitment and climate covariates, similar to the GYA effort, but will also explore additional covariates to capture differences in management strategies, genetics, disease history, migration patterns, and population connectivity among the state’s bighorn sheep populations. The presentation will focus on the goals of our work as well as the advantages of conducting preliminary data analysis prior to implementing large scale research projects

Montana’s New State-Wide Bighorn Sheep Research Initiative

Bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) conservation and management in Montana has been, and continues to be, a challenge. The majority of Montana’s bighorn sheep populations are patchily distributed across the state and are relatively small, with many populations static or periodically experiencing dramatic declines despite the fact that adequate habitat seems to be abundant. Wildlife managers and biologists are routinely making decisions on bighorn sheep population augmentation and restoration, harvest, habitat management, disease prevention and response, and other conservation actions without adequate knowledge of the drivers of demographic processes that inform management of many of Montana’s more successfully restored ungulate species. Field studies of bighorn sheep in Montana have been limited primarily to short-term, master’s thesis projects focused on a specific herd. A 6-yr research program has been designed and funded on the premise that research insights that are broadly applicable for management and conservation are best obtained by addressing the same questions in multiple populations representing differing demographic characteristics, ecological settings, and management histories that capture the range of variation realized by the species of interest. The research program will involve field studies of seven bighorn sheep herds in Montana, with data on each herd collected over a 5-yr period. Herds were selected to capture a wide range of variability in disease outbreak history, habitat types, and herd attributes in an effort to maximize our ability to partition and quantify the potential relative effects of these factors on lamb and adult survival, recruitment, and population dynamics

The Rachel Carson Letters and the Making of Silent Spring

Environment, conservation, green, and kindred movements look back to Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring as a milestone. The impact of the book, including on government, industry, and civil society, was immediate and substantial, and has been extensively described; however, the provenance of the book has been less thoroughly examined. Using Carson’s personal correspondence, this paper reveals that the primary source for Carson’s book was the extensive evidence and contacts compiled by two biodynamic farmers, Marjorie Spock and Mary T. Richards, of Long Island, New York. Their evidence was compiled for a suite of legal actions (1957-1960) against the U.S. Government and that contested the aerial spraying of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT). During Rudolf Steiner’s lifetime, Spock and Richards both studied at Steiner’s Goetheanum, the headquarters of Anthroposophy, located in Dornach, Switzerland. Spock and Richards were prominent U.S. anthroposophists, and established a biodynamic farm under the tutelage of the leading biodynamics exponent of the time, Dr. Ehrenfried Pfeiffer. When their property was under threat from a government program of DDT spraying, they brought their case, eventually lost it, in the process spent US$100,000, and compiled the evidence that they then shared with Carson, who used it, and their extensive contacts and the trial transcripts, as the primary input for Silent Spring. Carson attributed to Spock, Richards, and Pfeiffer, no credit whatsoever in her book. As a consequence, the organics movement has not received the recognition, that is its due, as the primary impulse for Silent Spring, and it is, itself, unaware of this provenance

Design for success: Identifying a process for transitioning to an intensive online course delivery model in health professions education.

Intensive courses (ICs), or accelerated courses, are gaining popularity in medical and health professions education, particularly as programs adopt e-learning models to negotiate challenges of flexibility, space, cost, and time. In 2014, the Department of Clinical Research and Leadership (CRL) at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences began the process of transitioning two online 15-week graduate programs to an IC model. Within a year, a third program also transitioned to this model. A literature review yielded little guidance on the process of transitioning from 15-week, traditional models of delivery to IC models, particularly in online learning environments. Correspondingly, this paper describes the process by which CRL transitioned three online graduate programs to an IC model and details best practices for course design and facilitation resulting from our iterative redesign process. Finally, we present lessons-learned for the benefit of other medical and health professions\u27 programs contemplating similar transitions. ABBREVIATIONS: CRL: Department of Clinical Research and Leadership; HSCI: Health Sciences; IC: Intensive course; PD: Program director; QM: Quality Matters

Higher harmonic anisotropic flow measurements of charged particles at 2.76 TeV with the ALICE detector

We report the measurements of elliptic flow $v_{2}$, as well as higher harmonics triangular flow $v_{3}$ and quadrangular flow $v_{4}$, in $\sqrt{s_{_{NN}}} =$ 2.76 TeV Pb--Pb collisions, measured with the ALICE detector. We show that the measured elliptic and triangular flow can be understood from the initial spatial anisotropy and its event--by--event fluctuations. The resulting fluctuations of $v_{2}$ and $v_{3}$ are also discussed.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, proceeding of Strangeness in Quark Matter 2011, Cracow, Polan

When performativity fails: Implications for Critical Management Studies

This article argues that recent calls in this journal and elsewhere for Critical Management Studies scholars to embrace rather than reject performativity presents an overly optimistic view of (a) the power of language to achieve emancipatory organizational change and (b) the capability of lone Critical Management Studies researchers to resignify management discourses. We introduce the notion of failed performatives to extend this argument and discuss its implications for critical inquiry. If Critical Management Studies seeks to make a practical difference in business and society, and realize its ideals of emancipation, we suggest alternative methods of impact must be explored

Imperfect Tests, Pervasive Pathogens, and Variable Demographic Performance: Thoughts on Managing Bighorn Sheep Respiratory Disease

Respiratory disease (pneumonia) has been a persistent challenge for bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) conservation and its cause has been attributed to numerous bacteria including Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae and several Pasteurellaceae family species. This study sought to investigate efficacy of diagnostic protocols in detecting Pasteurellaceae and Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae, generate sampling recommendations for different protocols, assess the distribution of these disease agents among 17 bighorn sheep populations in Montana and Wyoming, and evaluate what associations existed between detection of these agents and demographic performance of bighorn sheep populations. Analysis of replicate samples from individual bighorn sheep revealed that detection probability for regularlyused diagnostic protocols was generally low (<50%) for Pasteurellaceae and was high (>70%) for Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae, suggesting that routine pathogen sampling likely mischaracterizes respiratory pathogen communities. Power analyses found that most pathogen species could be detected with 80% confidence at the population-level by conducting regularly-used protocols multiple times per animal. Each pathogen species was detected in over half of the study populations, but after accounting for detection probability there was low confidence in negative test results for populations where Pasteurellaceae species were not detected. Seventy-six percent of study populations hosted both Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae and Pasteurellaceae pathogens, yet a number of these populations were estimated to have positive population growth rates and recruitment rates greater than 30%. Overall, the results of this work suggest that bighorn sheep respiratory disease may be mitigated by manipulating population characteristics and respiratory disease epizootics could be caused by pathogens already resident in bighorn sheep population

Mycobacteria in Nail Salon Whirlpool Footbaths, California

In 2000, an outbreak of Mycobacterium fortuitum furunculosis affected customers using whirlpool footbaths at a nail salon. We swabbed 30 footbaths in 18 nail salons from 5 California counties and found mycobacteria in 29 (97%); M. fortuitum was the most common. Mycobacteria may pose an infectious risk for pedicure customers