Year 1 report for ‘Conserving Texas Biodiversity: Status, Trends, and Conservation Planning for Fishes of Greatest Conservation Need’

State Wildlife Grant Program, grant TX T-106-1 (CFDA# 15.634), Contract No. 459125 UTA14-001402Substantive progress was made on all major Project Activities in this first year: Activity 1. Coordinate and Facilitate Science and Conservation Actions for Conserving Texas Biodiversity - We expanded and strengthened UT-TPWD coordination, transitioning the relationship between these partners into a much more collaborative one than was previously realized. The flow of data between TPWD and the Fishes of Texas Project (supported in part by this project) has become much more bi-directional. Many newly collected TPWD specimens, agency databases, legacy data products and reports, and feedback from resource managers are now beginning to contribute substantively to growth and diversity (now including non-specimen-vouchered records) of data served through the FoTX Project’s websites. Work on cleaning and normalizing of FoTX’s online specimen-vouchered database continued, and the updated FoTX occurrence and distribution data are being actively used. Most recently they were used by this project, together with expert (TPWD, UT and others’) opinions, to develop recommendations on conservation status of native fishes of Texas’ Species of Greatest Conservation Need for TPWD’s consideration in anticipated updates to the Texas Conservation Action Plan. Within two months of this report, a new and substantially larger and improved version of the FoTX website/database and related collection of images, field notes, and ancillary datasets, will be formally announced. Activity 2. Identify Priority Geographic Management Units for Conserving Fishes of Greatest Conservation Need - We used FoTX data in a systematic conservation area prioritization analysis to identify Native Fish Conservation Areas (NFCAs) for large portions of Texas where such comprehensive planning had not been previously carried out. Updated and new FoTX data for all Texas fish Species of Greatest Conservation Need (SGCN) were used in production of newly improved Species Distribution Models for input into this planning process, and the results of the planning exercise have already been integrated by TPWD into management prioritizations of both those species and the resultant NFCAs. Activity 3. Develop Monitoring and Conservation Plans for Native Fish Conservation Areas - Monitoring and conservation plans were delivered to TPWD for all NFCAs identified in Activity 2. Activity 4. Conduct Field-Based Surveys Detailed Biodiversity Assessments (i.e. Bioblitzing), and Citizen-Based Monitoring - Field surveys with detailed biodiversity assessments (“bioblitzes”) and citizen-based monitoring were conducted in three areas selected collaboratively by TPWD and FoTX Project staff from within the identified NFCAs: Nueces River headwaters, Big Cypress Bayou basin, and Village Creek basin. Along with this field effort, FoTX Project staff developed and circulated guidelines and best practices, and provided training for citizen-based monitoring that leverages iNaturalist for capture and reporting of photo-vouchered occurrence records in ways that will help assure scientifically useful data are obtained. All specimens acquired during these field efforts, and from many other routine specimen acquisitions from across the state (1845 total records/jars of specimens), were cataloged in the UT Fish Collection database. From there, these new records will soon be fed into GBIF, VertNet, FishNet2 and other major online data aggregators, including the online Fishes of Texas database.Texas Parks and Wildlife Department; U.S. Fish and Wildlife ServiceIntegrative Biolog

American Eel in Texas – what we do, don’t, and need to, know

Copy of the oral presentation made by the first author to the January 2016 meeting of the Texas Chapter of American Fisheries Society in Kerrville, Texas. Presentation is provided in several file formats. Data mapped in the presentation are also included in kml format (Google Earth).American Eel is undoubtedly one of the most studied freshwater fishes of North America. Many recent discoveries have added new insights that re-write important aspects of the “text book” knowledge of the species’ complex life history in ways that could have significant impacts on management. Despite all of this new information, debate about the species’ conservation status continues, and new threats, such as continued habitat loss and major clandestine fisheries driven by extremely high value in the global market, have further complicated management. Though USFWS recently decided that the species does not merit listing as “Endangered,” in 2012 Canada changed that country’s assessment of the species’ status from “Special Concern” (since 2006) to “Threatened” and IUCN upped its classification in 2013 to “Endangered.” Ontario has considered it “Endangered” since 2007. All U.S. Atlantic states vowed to work together to produce, in 1999, the American Eel Benchmark Stock Assessment, which mandated each state conduct standardized monitoring of recruitment and later, mandatory catch and effort monitoring. Given all that activity and data generation, it is remarkable that still so little is known about the populations of the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) and its tributary rivers that making any management decisions in that large, neglected part of the species’ range is virtually impossible. The Fishes of Texas Project team has been collating and improving the limited and scattered data on occurrences of the species in the region and concludes it important to promote a broad scale (Gulf of Mexico) collaborative community effort to acquire and share data and carefully curated specimens and, hopefully, develop a GOM-wide collaborative research and management plan like that implemented by Atlantic states. Here we’ll review the literature and state of knowledge about the species in Texas and GOM, and suggest ways to begin work toward such an effort.University of Texas at AustinIntegrative Biolog

Galactic Cosmic Rays from Superbubbles and the Abundances of Lithium, Beryllium, and Boron

In this article we study the galactic evolution of the LiBeB elements within the framework of a detailed model of the chemical evolution of the Galaxy that includes galactic cosmic ray nucleosynthesis by particles accelerated in superbubbles. The chemical composition of the superbubble consists of varying proportions of ISM and freshly supernova synthesized material. The observational trends of 6 LiBeB evolution are nicely reproduced by models in which GCR come from a mixture of 25% of supernova material with 75% of ISM, except for 6 Li, for which maybe an extra source is required at low metallicities. To account for 7 Li evolution several additional sources have been considered (neutrino-induced nucleosynthesis, nova outbursts, C-stars). The model fulfills the energetic requirements for GCR acceleration.Comment: 25 pages, 9 figures. Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa

Effectiveness of partner social support predicts enduring psychological distress after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation

Objective: Hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) survivors who are 1 to 3 years posttransplant are challenged by the need to resume valued social roles and activities—a task that may be complicated by enduring transplant-related psychological distress common in this patient population. The present study investigated whether transplant survivors who receive adequate social support from their spouse or intimate partner experience lower distress. Method: Effects of receiving a greater quantity of partner support (a common approach to studying enacted support) were compared with effects of receiving more effective partner support (i.e., support that more closely matches their needs in terms of its quantity and quality). Men and women (N = 230) who were 1 to 3 years posttransplant completed measures of partner support quantity (Manne & Schnoll, 2001), partner social support effectiveness (Rini & Dunkel Schetter, 2010), and psychological distress (Brief Symptom Inventory; Derogatis & Spencer, 1982). Potential medical and sociodemographic confounds were controlled in analyses. Results: As hypothesized, survivors reported less distress when they received more effective partner support (p < .001). Quantity of partner support was not associated with distress (p = .23). An interaction revealed that when partner support was effective, the quantity of support survivors received was not associated with their distress (p = .90); however, when partner support was ineffective, receiving a greater quantity of partner support was associated with substantially elevated distress (p = .002). Conclusions: Findings suggest that clinical approaches to addressing or preventing enduring distress after HSCT should target features of partner support related to its appraised effectiveness

Determinants of social media adoption by B2B organizations

This study contributes to the current dearth of knowledge on the potential of social media as a marketing tool in industrial settings, by focusing on factors that determine social media adoption by B2B organizations. A conceptual model, which draws on the technology acceptance model and resource-based theory, is developed and tested using quantitative data from B2B organizations in the UK. Findings suggest that perceived usefulness of social media within B2B organizational contexts is determined by image, perceived ease of use and perceived barriers. Additionally, the results show that adoption of social media is significantly affected by organizational innovativeness and perceived usefulness. The moderating role of organizational innovativeness is also tested but no support is found. The findings of the study are further validated via nine qualitative interviews with B2B senior managers, yielding additional interesting and in-depth insights into the drivers of social media adoption by B2B organizations

Assessing Historical Fish Community Composition Using Surveys, Historical Collection Data, and Species Distribution Models

Accurate establishment of baseline conditions is critical to successful management and habitat restoration. We demonstrate the ability to robustly estimate historical fish community composition and assess the current status of the urbanized Barton Creek watershed in central Texas, U.S.A. Fish species were surveyed in 2008 and the resulting data compared to three sources of fish occurrence information: (i) historical records from a museum specimen database and literature searches; (ii) a nearly identical survey conducted 15 years earlier; and (iii) a modeled historical community constructed with species distribution models (SDMs). This holistic approach, and especially the application of SDMs, allowed us to discover that the fish community in Barton Creek was more diverse than the historical data and survey methods alone indicated. Sixteen native species with high modeled probability of occurrence within the watershed were not found in the 2008 survey, seven of these were not found in either survey or in any of the historical collection records. Our approach allowed us to more rigorously establish the true baseline for the pre-development fish fauna and then to more accurately assess trends and develop hypotheses regarding factors driving current fish community composition to better inform management decisions and future restoration efforts. Smaller, urbanized freshwater systems, like Barton Creek, typically have a relatively poor historical biodiversity inventory coupled with long histories of alteration, and thus there is a propensity for land managers and researchers to apply inaccurate baseline standards. Our methods provide a way around that limitation by using SDMs derived from larger and richer biodiversity databases of a broader geographic scope. Broadly applied, we propose that this technique has potential to overcome limitations of popular bioassessment metrics (e.g., IBI) to become a versatile and robust management tool for determining status of freshwater biotic communities