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

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

Final Report: Conservation assessment and mapping products for GPLCC priority fish taxa

Final Report: Conservation assessment and mapping products for GPLCC priority fish taxaStrategic conservation planning for broad, multi-species landscapes benefits from a data-driven approach that emphasizes persistence of all priority species populations and utilized landscapes, while simultaneously accounting for human uses. This study presents such an assessment for priority fishes of the Great Plains of the United States. Species distribution models for 28 priority fishes were created and incorporated into a prioritization framework using the open source software Zonation, accounting for species-specific connectivity needs and current fish habitat condition. Multiple additional assessments were then produced that i.) identify distinct species management units based on distance and compositional similarity of stream segments containing priority species, ii.) compare results of ranking species' conservation values at the local (state) and global scale, and iii.) provide 'bang-for-buck' perspectives, emphasizing richness of priority species, at state and major basin scales. Together, these analyses are intended to aid managers in effective allocation of conservation action with regards to imperiled fishes of the Great Plains. Implementation of a broad-scale multi-species approach such as this complements traditional reactive management and restoration by encouraging cooperation and coordination among stakeholders and partners, increasing efficiency of future monitoring and management efforts.United States Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, Great Plains Landscape Conservation CooperativeIntegrative Biolog

Final Report: Data provision and projected impact of climate change on fish biodiversity within the Desert LCC

The four primary objectives of this project were to: (1) compile a dataset of fish occurrence records for the entirety of the Rio Grande drainage in the US and Mexico; (2) improve that dataset by reformatting dates, synonymizing species names to a modern taxonomy, georeferencing localities, and flagging geographic outliers; (3) for those species with sufficient data for modeling, create species distribution models (SDMs); (4) use the environmental conditions determined via those models to project the species distributions into the future under two climate scenarios. To accomplish those objectives, we compiled 495,101 fish occurrence records mined from 122 original sources into a single database. We then, on the basis of text string searches of the original sources' verbatim locality fields, extracted 145,426 records that we judged to have a reasonable likelihood of being from the Rio Grande drainage. For those records we edited taxonomy, reformatted dates, and finally georeferenced 59,156 (41%) records, which proved sufficient for constructing SDMs for 36 species that met a priori quality assurance criteria. We provide basic interpretation of these models and discuss projections of them into several different future climate forecasts. Products include raw model outputs and symbolized maps helpful in interpretation and comparison, as well as raw data sets and recommendations regarding how all of these product might be used in future management and research efforts.United States Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, Desert Landscape Conservation CooperativeTexas Natural Science Cente

Final Report: Data compilation, distribution models, conservation planning, and status survey for selected fishes of concern in Texas and region

The four primary objectives of this project were to: (1) compile a dataset of georeferenced range-wide occurrence records for 6 target fish species (Notropis buccula, N. oxyrhynchus, N. girardi, Hybognathus amarus, Platygobio gracilis, Macrhybopsis tetranema, Pteronotropis hubbsi, and Percina maculata); (2) use a high quality and geographically wide-ranging subset of those data to create species distribution models (SDM’s), which convert point occurrences into a continuous probability coverage; (3) use those models in conjunction with 130 additional SDM’s (previously created) to develop modeled conservation priority areas for Texas; and (4) complete a status survey for N. oxyrhynchus and N. buccula in the mainstem of the middle Brazos River. The dataset provided, derived from 51 original sources, includes 11,082 records, of which we were able to georeference 3,675 (33%). This number of records was sufficient for constructing SDM’s for the six target species, with all models meeting quality assurance criteria. Using these models, conservation area prioritizations were developed for Texas under several guiding criteria for decision making. The field survey sampled the mainstem Brazos at 20 sites between Possum Kingdom Reservoir and Bryan, TX, collecting 65,840 fish specimens representing 46 species. Neither survey target species was collected, suggesting absence or extreme rarity of both in this reach of the Brazos at the time of sampling. Collection sites upstream of Waco, compared to those downstream of that city, were less diverse in cyprinids and more diverse in non-native species, suggesting more heavily impacted habitat upstream of Waco. All raw data used in analyses and results of analyses and the field survey are provided with the written report.Texas Parks and Wildlife Department Section 6 grant TX E-136-R, TPWD #416853Texas Natural Science Cente

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International audienceBackground : The incidence of childhood type 1 diabetes (T1D) incidence is rising in many countries, supposedlybecause of changing environmental factors, which are yet largely unknown. The purpose of the study was tounravel environmental markers associated with T1D. Methods : Cases were children with T1D from the French Isis-Diab cohort. Controls were schoolmates or friends ofthe patients. Parents were asked to fill a 845-item questionnaire investigating the child’s environment before diagnosis.The analysis took into account the matching between cases and controls. A second analysis used propensity scoremethods. Results : We found a negative association of several lifestyle variables, gastroenteritis episodes, dental hygiene, hazelnutcocoa spread consumption, wasp and bee stings with T1D, consumption of vegetables from a farm and death of a petby old age. Conclusions : The found statistical association of new environmental markers with T1D calls for replication in othercohorts and investigation of new environmental areas