Acoustic Assessment of Year-round Bat Activity and Distribution in Montana and Surrounding Areas

Montana’s bat species face an array of conservation issues including wind energy development and disease. A collaborative project between state and federal agencies was initiated in 2011 to collect baseline data prior to the arrival of White-nose Syndrome and help inform surveillance and future mitigation strategies. In the last 6 years, we deployed a network of Song Meter ultrasonic acoustic detector/recorder stations at 76 sites across the region for an average of 1.8 years per station. Each detector recorded nightly bat passes across all seasons. To date 9.5 million sound files have been recorded. Using automated scrubbing and identification software we identified call sequences and generated initial species identifications, then hand confirmed species presence by month at each site. Over 54,000 bat passes have been reviewed by hand and used to track activity of all species at each site. To date we have 2,770 new records of monthly species presence, regular winter activity of 3 resident species, and year-round presence of 1 species previously considered migratory. Through integrating National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association weather station with our call data, we have found positive correlations in activity with temperature and barometric pressure, and negative correlations with wind speed. Our experiences with these data highlight the importance of: (1) maintaining common settings across recording devices and consistent processing standards; (2) maintaining publicly available call libraries that can be reanalyzed using the latest software and made available to software developers; and (3) making standards used for species determinations available for peer review

Baseline Indices for Calling Amphibians and Western Toads Across Montana

Amphibian populations are undergoing global decline, and nearly one-third of the world’s amphibian species are threatened.  Structured surveys can use a variety of invasive and noninvasive techniques to assess the status of a species while repeatable surveys allow for longterm monitoring to identify population trends.  To establish baselines for species occupancy and indices for abundance we conducted two projects to inventory amphibians during May and June of 2016.  We conducted roadside calling surveys for species that advertise breeding through calls and lentic surveys at known breeding locations of the Western Toad (Anaxyrus boreas).  Roadside surveys were broken into west and east regions based on species distributions.  We detected two species at seven of the eight western transects, Pacific Tree Frog (Pseudacris regilla) and American Bullfrog (Lithobates catesbeianus).  The Pacific Tree Frog was identified at 19% of the stations sampled, but at low densities.  In the east, we detected five species of amphibians at 18 of the 19 transects, Boreal Chorus Frog (P. maculate), Northern Leopard Frog (L. pipiens), Great Plains Toad (A. cognatus), Woodhouse’s Toad (A. woodhousii), and Plains Spadefoot Toad (Spea bombifrons).  The Boreal Chorus Frogs were most commonly detected (39%) followed by Woodhouse’s Toad (13%) and Plains Spadefoot (12%).  Of the 76 sites we surveyed for Western Toad, 63% had evidence of breeding.  These surveys can be used as primary indices for future surveys to determine trends in abundance and occupancy through time and inform state status ranks

Evaluation of indicators of environmental sensitivity with respect to bats and their native habitats near Albeni Falls Dam and Lake Pend Oreille, Idaho /

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Nix is a selective autophagy receptor for mitochondrial clearance

Autophagy is the cellular homeostatic pathway that delivers large cytosolic materials for degradation in the lysosome. Recent evidence indicates that autophagy mediates selective removal of protein aggregates, organelles and microbes in cells. Yet, the specificity in targeting a particular substrate to the autophagy pathway remains poorly understood. Here, we show that the mitochondrial protein Nix is a selective autophagy receptor by binding to LC3/GABARAP proteins, ubiquitin-like modifiers that are required for the growth of autophagosomal membranes. In cultured cells, Nix recruits GABARAP-L1 to damaged mitochondria through its amino-terminal LC3-interacting region. Furthermore, ablation of the Nix:LC3/GABARAP interaction retards mitochondrial clearance in maturing murine reticulocytes. Thus, Nix functions as an autophagy receptor, which mediates mitochondrial clearance after mitochondrial damage and during erythrocyte differentiation