Geology topics

Seth A. Moore

Publications and source records attributed to Seth A. Moore.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

USGS2025

The influence of human presence and footprint on animal space use in US national parks

Given the importance of protected areas for biodiversity, the growth of visitation to many areas has raised concerns about the effects of humans on wildlife. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic led to temporary closure of national parks in the United States, offering a pseudonatural experiment to tease apart the effects of permanent infrastructure and transient human presence on animals. We compiled GPS tracking data from 229 individuals of 10 mammal species in 14 parks and used third-order hierarchical resource selection functions to evaluate the influence of the human footprint on animal space use in 2019 and 2020. Averaged across all parks and species, animals avoided the human footprint, whether the park was open or closed. However, although animals in remote areas showed consistent avoidance, on average those in more developed areas switched from avoidance to selection when protected areas were closed. Findings varied across species: some responded consistently negatively to the footprint (wolves, mountain goats), some positively (mule deer, red fox) and others had a strong exposure-mediated response (elk, mountain lion). Furthermore, some species responded more strongly to the park closure (black bear, moose). This study advances our understanding of complex interactions between recreation and wildlife in protected areas.

western United States↗

USGS2025

Food web structure of the Lake Superior fish community in 2021–2022

The trophic linkages and ecological requirements of the Lake Superior fish community have not been assessed on a whole lake scale in over a decade. Here, we investigated the trophic dynamics across multiple species and habitat zones of Lake Superior. From April to October of 2021 and 2022, a total of five piscivore, four planktivore, and six benthivore species were collected by region and length class during bottom-trawl, standard gillnet, commercial cisco gillnet, and recreational angler surveys. To assess trophic linkages, stomach contents were measured to estimate biomass consumed and a multivariate analysis was used to assess diet composition by species, length, and region. We found a high degree of interconnectedness in the Lake Superior food web, with Mysis as a critical diet item for most fishes. Native piscivore diets varied by region and with ontogeny. Lake charr were important habitat couplers in the lake, exhibiting a diverse diet and opportunistic foraging strategy. Conversely, Pacific salmon were more restricted in their foraging. Planktivores and benthivores primarily consumed Mysis , with less reliance on Diporeia compared to previous studies. Lake whitefish and cisco were the exception to this pattern, with broader bathymetric depth distributions represented in their diets. We found the food web to be supported by a predominantly native species assemblage, with redundancies at all trophic levels.

Lake Superior↗

USGS2024

Intrinsic and environmental drivers of pairwise cohesion in wild Canis social groups

Animals within social groups respond to costs and benefits of sociality by adjusting the proportion of time they spend in close proximity to other individuals in the group (cohesion). Variation in cohesion between individuals, in turn, shapes important group-level processes such as subgroup formation and fission–fusion dynamics. Although critical to animal sociality, a comprehensive understanding of the factors influencing cohesion remains a gap in our knowledge of cooperative behavior in animals. We tracked 574 individuals from six species within the genus Canis in 15 countries on four continents with GPS telemetry to estimate the time that pairs of individuals within social groups spent in close proximity and test hypotheses regarding drivers of cohesion. Pairs of social canids ( Canis spp.) varied widely in the proportion of time they spent together (5%–100%) during seasonal monitoring periods relative to both intrinsic characteristics and environmental conditions. The majority of our data came from three species of wolves (gray wolves, eastern wolves, and red wolves) and coyotes. For these species, cohesion within social groups was greatest between breeding pairs and varied seasonally as the nature of cooperative activities changed relative to annual life history patterns. Across species, wolves were more cohesive than coyotes. For wolves, pairs were less cohesive in larger groups, and when suitable, small prey was present reflecting the constraints of food resources and intragroup competition on social associations. Pair cohesion in wolves declined with increased anthropogenic modification of the landscape and greater climatic variability, underscoring challenges for conserving social top predators in a changing world. We show that pairwise cohesion in social groups varies strongly both within and across Canis species, as individuals respond to changing ecological context defined by resources, competition, and anthropogenic disturbance. Our work highlights that cohesion is a highly plastic component of animal sociality that holds significant promise for elucidating ecological and evolutionary mechanisms underlying cooperative behavior.

Ecology↗

USGS2024

Factors influencing larval coregonine spatial distribution in Lake Geneva (Europe) and Lake Superior (North America) during a single season near known spawning sites

Survival rate of the larval stage is an important driver of fish recruitment. To understand mechanisms regulating larval survival it is important to understand the relative importance of abiotic and biotic factors that shape larval spatial distributions. We studied larval Coregonus distributions in surface waters (surface to 1 m) by repeatedly sampling study sites in two lakes that varied greatly in trophic state and regional climate. We evaluated the importance of bathymetric depth, Julian Day, edible zooplankton densities (EZ, ind. L −1 ) and wind vectors on larval spatial distributions using generalized additive modeling. In both systems, larval counts declined in a negative exponential fashion with bathymetric depth, indicating shallow depths are critical nursery habitat. The north-south wind vectors and Julian Day (which was positively correlated with surface temperature) influenced larval distributions in Lake Geneva with larval counts related to both variables linearly, whereas the east-west wind vector and EZ were unimportant. Highest larval counts were during an offshore south wind and declined slightly with Julian Day. In Lake Superior, bathymetric depth and the east-west wind vector influenced larval distributions and were unrelated to EZ, Julian Day, and the north-south wind vector. Larval counts were highest when onshore southwest winds preceded sampling. Differences in how wind affected larval distribution (offshore vs. onshore) might be related to larval size with Lake Superior larvae considerably smaller (average length 12.9 mm vs. 15.9 mm); thus, more apt to be subjected to advection. Within coastal waters, Julian Day and wind vectors influence distributions, but their importance seemingly varies lake-to-lake.

Minnesota↗

USGS2023

Behavioral responses of terrestrial mammals to COVID-19 lockdowns

COVID-19 lockdowns reduced human mobility, providing an opportunity to disentangle its effects on animals from those of landscape modifications. Using GPS data, we compared movements and road avoidance of 2300 terrestrial mammals (43 species) during the 2020 lockdowns to the same period in 2019. Individual responses were variable, with no change in average movements or road avoidance behavior, likely due to variable lockdown conditions. However, under strict lockdowns,10-day, 95th percentile displacements increased by 73%, suggesting increased landscape permeability. In areas of high human footprint, animals' 1-hour, 95th percentile displacements declined by 12%, and animals were 36% closer to roads, indicating reduced avoidance during lockdowns. Overall, lockdowns rapidly altered some spatial behaviors, highlighting the variable but substantial impact of human mobility on wildlife worldwide.

Science↗

USGS2013

Morphometric variation among spawning cisco aggregations in the Laurentian Great Lakes: are historic forms still present?

Cisco (Coregonus artedi Leseur, formerly lake herring Leucichthys artedi Leseur) populations in each of the Laurentian Great Lakes collapsed between the late 1920s and early 1960s following a multitude of stressors, and never recovered in Lakes Michigan, Erie and Ontario. Prior to their collapse, Koelz (1929) studied Leucichthys spp. in the Great Lakes basin and provided a description of their diversity. Three cisco morphotypes were described; a ‘slim terete’morphotype (L. artedi artedi), a ‘deep compressed’ morphotype (L. artedi albus), and a deep-bodied form resembling tullibee in western Canadian lakes (L. artedi manitoulinus). Based on body measurements of 159 individuals (Koelz 1929), we used discriminant function analysis (DFA) to discriminate historic morphotypes. Shapes of historic morphotypes were found to vary significantly (Pillai’s trace = 1.16, P < 0.0001). The final DFA model used nine body measurements and correctly classified 90% of the historic cisco. Important discriminating measurements included body depth, eye diameter, and dorsal fin base and height. Between October-November of 2007-2011, we sampled cisco from 16 Great Lakes sites collecting digital photographs of over 1, 700 individuals. We applied the DFA model to their body measurements and classified each individual to a morphotype. Contemporary cisco from Lakes Superior, Ontario and Michigan were predominantly classified as artedi, while the most common classifications from northern Lake Huron were albus and manitoulinus. Finding historic morphotypes is encouraging because it suggests that the morphological variation present prior to their collapse still exists. We conclude that contemporary cisco having shapes matching the missing historic morphotypes in the lower lakes warrant special consideration as potential donor populations in reestablishment efforts.

Lake Michigan;Lake Erie;Lake Ontario;Lake Huron;La↗