International political boundaries challenge species conservation because they can hinder coordinated management. Peripheral transboundary species, those with a large portion of their range in one country and a small, peripheral portion in an adjacent country, may be particularly vulnerable to mismatches in management because peripheral populations are likely in greater conservation need than core populations. However, no systematic assessment of peripheral transboundary species or their status across borders has been attempted. We show that numerous species in three vertebrate taxa qualify as peripheral transboundary species in North America, and that these species are often protected differently across US-Canadian and US-Mexican borders. Asymmetries in cross-border protection may threaten populations through disruption of connectivity between periphery and core regions and are especially relevant given expected impacts of climate change and the US-Mexico border wall. Our results highlight the need for greater international collaboration in management and planning decisions for transboundary species. K E Y W O R D Sclimate change, conservation planning, international border, protection status, range, transboundary, vertebrates This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Interspecies foraging associations occur in a wide variety of vertebrate taxa and are maintained through gains in foraging efficiency and (or) predator avoidance. Despite their advantages, foraging associations often are variable in space and time and benefits may not accrue equally to all participants. In mammals, interspecies associations between solitary mammalian carnivores are rare. Coyotes (Canis latrans Say, 1823) and American badgers (Taxidea taxus (Schreber, 1777)) occasionally form hunting associations in pursuit of ground squirrels (Spermophilus armatus Kennicott, 1863), yet spatiotemporal variation in this association may be substantial. Better documentation of coyote–badger interactions across space and time will improve our understanding of the environmental drivers of this relationship and its benefit to both species. We used a broad-scale camera trapping array to document coyote–badger hunting associations. Out of 46 detections of badgers, we found five instances of hunting associations with coyotes, all of which occurred in mid- to late summer when ground squirrels were most active. Given our high rate of detection, these interactions are likely common on our study area. Habitat characteristics of the regions where we document coyote–badger interactions may have increased the likelihood of hunting associations. Our study demonstrates the effectiveness of camera traps for documenting this association and suggests that the coyote–badger system may be ideal for studying drivers of spatiotemporal variation in foraging associations.
The application of species distribution models (SDMs) to areas outside of where a model was created allows informed decisions across large spatial scales, yet transferability remains a challenge in ecological modeling. We examined how regional variation in animal‐environment relationships influenced model transferability for Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis), with an additional conservation aim of modeling lynx habitat across the northwestern United States. Simultaneously, we explored the effect of sample size from GPS data on SDM model performance and transferability. We used data from three geographically distinct Canada lynx populations in Washington (n = 17 individuals), Montana (n = 66), and Wyoming (n = 10) from 1996 to 2015. We assessed regional variation in lynx‐environment relationships between these three populations using principal components analysis (PCA). We used ensemble modeling to develop SDMs for each population and all populations combined and assessed model prediction and transferability for each model scenario using withheld data and an extensive independent dataset (n = 650). Finally, we examined GPS data efficiency by testing models created with sample sizes of 5%–100% of the original datasets. PCA results indicated some differences in environmental characteristics between populations; models created from individual populations showed differential transferability based on the populations' similarity in PCA space. Despite population differences, a single model created from all populations performed as well, or better, than each individual population. Model performance was mostly insensitive to GPS sample size, with a plateau in predictive ability reached at ~30% of the total GPS dataset when initial sample size was large. Based on these results, we generated well‐validated spatial predictions of Canada lynx distribution across a large portion of the species' southern range, with precipitation and temperature the primary environmental predictors in the model. We also demonstrated substantial redundancy in our large GPS dataset, with predictive performance insensitive to sample sizes above 30% of the original.
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