Geology topics

Ben C. Scheele

Publications and source records attributed to Ben C. Scheele.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

USGS2026

Adaptive capacity of alpine fauna in Australia

Climate change is leading to rapid and unprecedented changes to Australia's alpine ecosystems. The impacts of these changes at a species level are not fully understood, making it challenging to holistically assess the impacts of a changing climate in these ecosystems. To address this gap, we combine a literature review with expert opinion to conduct individual adaptive capacity analyses for 29 species of Australia's alpine animals. We conduct these analyses using a published framework which encompasses key themes, such as life history, capacity for movement, genetic variation, and distribution. Our results highlight diversity in the adaptive capacity of Australia's alpine animals and suggest that climate change will impact even closely related species in surprisingly disparate ways. Our study also provides an example of how to overcome perceived data deficiency and support conservation practitioners with what is known. We have created an important resource for land managers in Australia's Alps that systematically integrates diverse data to provide insight into the mechanisms behind the vulnerability of some of Australia's most threatened species to climate change. The evidence this study collates should be considered in conservation planning to ensure species-level natural history information is included in decisions about management actions to mitigate climate change impacts.

Conservation Science and Practice↗

USGS2025

Evolution of research on global amphibian declines

In the late 1980s, the scientific community became aware of severe, enigmatic amphibian population declines. These declines triggered a wave of research focused on quantifying their extent and identifying key drivers. We used text-analysis techniques, including topic modeling and geoparsing, to examine the evolution of research focused on amphibian declines. We sought to provide an example of scientific inquiry in action, from the initial recognition and quantification of the phenomenon to identifying drivers and understanding mechanisms of amphibian decline. We delineated research topics, tracked spatiotemporal trends from 1985 to 2024, and extracted the number of publications per topic. Early research focused on evaluating the veracity of declines and was followed by investigations of potential drivers (in particular, UVB radiation, pollution, and habitat fragmentation and loss). After the amphibian chytrid fungus ( Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis ) was identified in the late 1990s, research emphasis shifted toward disease. Subsequently, disease-focused research became increasingly specialized, the primary topics of which were susceptibility, resistance and tolerance, and mitigation. Most recently, extinction risk and climate change became increasingly prominent topics, reflecting emerging threats to amphibians. Regions with high amphibian biodiversity and observed declines (e.g., Central and South America) were underrepresented in the literature, and research was strongly biased toward North America, Australia, and Europe. We uncovered a clear disconnect between the amphibian decline literature and the development of effective management and conservation actions. To address this gap, we suggest an increased emphasis on the application of existing knowledge to drive meaningful conservation outcomes and prioritization of new research on ongoing and emerging threats.

Conservation Biology↗

USGS2019

Conservation decisions under pressure: Lessons from an exercise in rapid response to wildlife disease

Novel outbreaks of emerging pathogens require rapid responses to enable successful mitigation. We simulated a 1‐day emergency meeting where experts were engaged to recommend mitigation strategies for a new outbreak of the amphibian fungal pathogen Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans . Despite the inevitable uncertainty, experts suggested and discussed several possible strategies. However, their recommendations were undermined by imperfect initial definitions of the objectives and scope of management. This problem is likely to arise in most real‐world emergency situations. The exercise thus highlighted the importance of clearly defining the context, objectives, and spatial–temporal scale of mitigation decisions. Managers are commonly under pressure to act immediately. However, an iterative process in which experts and managers cooperate to clarify objectives and uncertainties, while collecting more information and devising mitigation strategies, may be slightly more time consuming but ultimately lead to better outcomes.

Conservation Science and Practice↗

USGS2018

Decision making for mitigating wildlife diseases: From theory to practice for an emerging fungal pathogen of amphibians

Conservation science can be most effective in its decision‐support role when seeking answers to clearly formulated questions of direct management relevance. Emerging wildlife diseases, a driver of global biodiversity loss, illustrate the challenges of performing this role: in spite of considerable research, successful disease mitigation is uncommon. Decision analysis is increasingly advocated to guide mitigation planning, but its application remains rare. Using an integral projection model, we explored potential mitigation actions for avoiding population declines and the ongoing spatial spread of the fungus Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans ( Bsal ). This fungus has recently caused severe amphibian declines in north‐western Europe and currently threatens Palearctic salamander diversity. Available evidence suggests that a Bsal outbreak in a fire salamander ( Salamandra salamandra ) population will lead to its rapid extirpation. Treatments such as antifungals or probiotics would need to effectively interrupt transmission (reduce probability of infection by nearly 90%) in order to reduce the risk of host extirpation and successfully eradicate the pathogen. Improving the survival of infected hosts is most likely to be detrimental as it increases the potential for pathogen transmission and spread. Active removal of a large proportion of the host population has some potential to locally eradicate Bsal and interrupt its spread, depending on the presence of Bsal reservoirs and on the host's spatial dynamics, which should therefore represent research priorities. Synthesis and applications . Mitigation of Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans epidemics in susceptible host species is highly challenging, requiring effective interruption of transmission and radical removal of host individuals. More generally, our study illustrates the advantages of framing conservation science directly in the management decision context, rather than adapting to it a posteriori .

Journal of Applied Ecology↗