Geology topics

Hyo Won Lee

Publications and source records attributed to Hyo Won Lee.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

USGS2025

Foraging of wading birds on a patchy landscape: Simulating effects of social information, interference competition, and patch selection on prey intake and individual distribution

Foragers on patchy landscapes must acquire sufficient resources despite uncertainty in the location and amount of the resources. Optimal Foraging Theory posits that foragers deal with this uncertainty by using strategies that optimize resource intake within foraging periods. For species such as wading birds, this optimization is closely linked to their survival and reproductive success. Understanding the influence of patch selection on individual resource intake and foraging distribution is therefore crucial. In this study, we simulated how resource distribution, interference competition, and social cues—such as aggregation behaviors—influence resource intake and foraging spatial distribution. We employed an individual-based model simulating wading bird foraging behaviors, with 900 individuals simultaneously foraging across a landscape with unknown resource distribution. Birds employed one of three patch-finding strategies: random, cue-searching, or hybrid, which uses both searching strategies. Each bird decided whether to remain in a patch based on a prey density threshold. We compared the daily resource intake and foraging distribution of birds across different modeled patch-finding strategies, resource distribution patterns, and the presence or absence of interference competition. Wading birds exhibiting aggregation behavior displayed increased intake rates when resources were concentrated and interference minimal. Aggregation behavior led to a closer match with the ideal free distribution when the prey density threshold was optimal. These findings provide theoretical support that aggregation behavior is effective in scenarios where resources are concentrated in a few patches, social cues are used by relatively few individuals, and interference competition is limited.

Ecological Modelling↗

USGS2024

Visualizing wading bird optimal foraging decisions with aggregation behaviors using individual-based modeling

Foragers on patchy landscapes must efficiently balance time between searching for and consuming resources to meet their daily energetic requirements. Spatial aggregation foraging behaviors may improve foraging efficiency by sharing information on locations of resource hotspots. Wading birds are an example of patch foragers that form colonial aggregations during the breeding season to obtain sufficient prey energy to sustain themselves and their offspring each day. Here, we describe a spatially-explicit simulation model of wading bird optimal foraging that represents information sharing through visual cues. The overall purpose of the model is to describe how wading bird daily foraging and reproductive success may change with alternative water control management practices that determine spatial availability of prey for wading birds on the landscape, throughout their breeding seasons. Wading birds are simulated as individuals that operate independently, sampling and selecting among patches based on a prey density tolerance threshold, but also use information from other birds to inform their selection decisions. Foraging success is evaluated against the fundamental objectives of (a) fulfilling daily energetic demands and (b) minimizing predation exposure, by tracking individual daily energetic intake and time spent foraging. In this way, the model approximates population level dynamics of wading bird aggregations that emerge through collective decision making of birds simulated at the lower individual level. Key results of this study suggest that aggregation behaviors may improve population-level foraging success rates, and the optimal settling threshold may modulate when resources become more scarce or difficult to find. Thus, the model addresses ecological theory on the advantages of foraging in groups versus independently. This technique is appropriate for evaluating wading bird populations that forage on patchy landscapes, such as seasonally-pulsed wetlands, wherever sufficient information is available to describe (1) foraging behavior (e.g., feeding rate, flight speeds, patch selection decisions), (2) key landscape characteristics, (3) spatial distributions of prey densities among foraging patches, and (4) changes in prey densities through time. The model was designed to predict qualitative, testable spatial patterns of wading bird foraging movements which can be compared with empirical observations and empirically-derived habitat suitability models. These techniques can also be applied to other bird species, such as shorebirds, or more generally to any species that transits between discrete foraging patches.

Ecological Modelling↗

USGS2024

Microbial diversity, genomics, and phage–host interactions of cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms

The occurrence of cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms (cyanoHABs) is related to their physical and chemical environment. However, less is known about their associated microbial interactions and processes. In this study, cyanoHABs were analyzed as a microbial ecosystem, using 1 year of 16S rRNA sequencing and 70 metagenomes collected during the bloom season from Lake Okeechobee (Florida, USA). Biogeographical patterns observed in microbial community composition and function reflected ecological zones distinct in their physical and chemical parameters that resulted in bloom “hotspots” near major lake inflows. Changes in relative abundances of taxa within multiple phyla followed increasing bloom severity. Functional pathways that correlated with increasing bloom severity encoded organic nitrogen and phosphorus utilization, storage of nutrients, exchange of genetic material, phage defense, and protection against oxidative stress, suggesting that microbial interactions may promote cyanoHAB resilience. Cyanobacterial communities were highly diverse, with picocyanobacteria ubiquitous and oftentimes most abundant, especially in the absence of blooms. The identification of novel bloom-forming cyanobacteria and genomic comparisons indicated a functionally diverse cyanobacterial community with differences in its capability to store nitrogen using cyanophycin and to defend against phage using CRISPR and restriction-modification systems. Considering blooms in the context of a microbial ecosystem and their interactions in nature, physiologies and interactions supporting the proliferation and stability of cyanoHABs are proposed, including a role for phage infection of picocyanobacteria. This study displayed the power of “-omics” to reveal important biological processes that could support the effective management and prediction of cyanoHABs.

Florida↗

USGS2022

Wading bird foraging on a wetland landscape: A comparison of two strategies

Tactile-feeding wading birds, such as wood storks and white ibises, require high densities of prey such as small fishes and crayfish to support themselves and their offspring during the breeding season. Prey availability in wetlands is often determined by seasonal hydrologic pulsing, such as in the subtropical Everglades, where spatial distributions of prey can vary through time, becoming heterogeneously clumped in patches, such as ponds or sloughs, as the wetland dries out. In this mathematical modeling study, we selected two possible foraging strategies to examine how they impact total energetic intake over a time scale of one day. In the first, wading birds sample prey patches without a priori knowledge of the patches' prey densities, moving from patch to patch, staying long enough to estimate the prey density, until they find one that meets a predetermined satisfactory threshold, and then staying there for a longer period. For this case, we solve for a wading bird's expected prey intake over the course of a day, given varying theoretical probability distributions of patch prey densities across the landscape. In the second strategy considered, it is assumed that the wading bird samples a given number of patches, and then uses memory to return to the highest quality patch. Our results show how total intake over a day is impacted by assumptions of the parameters governing the spatial distribution of prey among patches, which is a key source of parameter uncertainty in both natural and managed ecosystems. Perhaps surprisingly, the foraging strategy that uses a prey density threshold generally led to higher maximum potential prey intake than the strategy for using memory to return to the best patch sampled. These results will contribute to understanding the foraging of wading birds and to the management of wetlands.

Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering↗

USGS2021

Hierarchical functional response of a forager on a wetland landscape

We show that for some foragers the form that a functional response takes depends on the temporal and spatial scales considered. In representing the consumption rate of an organism, it may be necessary to use a hierarchy of functional responses. Consider, for example, a wading bird foraging in wetland landscape characterized by a spatial distribution of potential foraging sites, such as ponds. At the smallest time scale of minutes or hours, during which a wading bird is foraging within a single site, the functional response will reflect the local density of prey, as well as features of the site that affect the feeding rate, such as water depth. At this short time scale, which is determined by the giving up time of the wading bird in a particular site, prey density may be relatively constant. The food intake from a particular pond is then the product of the time spent before giving-up time and moving to another site and the rate of prey consumption at that site. A prey-centered functional response is most appropriate for describing the prey consumption rate. We propose that over the longer time scale of a day, during which a wading bird may visit several foraging sites, the type of functional response can be considered to be patch centered. That is, it is influenced by the spatial configuration of sites with available prey and the wading bird’s strategy of choosing among different sites and decisions on how long to stay in any given sites. Over the time scale of a day, if the prey densities stay relatively constant, the patch-centered functional response for a constant environment is adequate. However, on the longer time scale of a breeding season, in which changing water levels result in temporal changes in the availability of prey in sites, a third hierarchical level may be relevant. At that scale, the way in which the landscape pattern changes through time, and how the wading bird responds, influences the functional response. This hierarchical concept applies to a colony of breeding wading birds foraging in wetlands such as the Everglades.

Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution↗