UAV flights were conducted between August 26, 2024, and September 1, 2024, at and around the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in the East River Valley, Gothic, Colorado, USA (38°57′ N, 106°59′ W; approximately 2900 m elevation). The study area included marmot colonies located in two core zones,

UAV flights were conducted between August 26, 2024, and September 1, 2024, at and around the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in the East River Valley, Gothic, Colorado, USA (38°57′ N, 106°59′ W; approximately 2900 m elevation). The study area included marmot colonies located in two core zones,

The role of plant-pollinator interactions is essential for successful plant and pollinator reproduction, thus influencing community assembly of both plants and animals within an ecosystem. Pollinators exhibit competitive behavior in order to collect adequate quantities of pollen and nectar, and bees

Changes to climate can have a variety of consequences on organisms across all taxa. Though we are seeing climate changes across the globe, these effects can often be greater in high-elevation regions. For mammals in these environments, climate change can alter phenology, survival, and reproduction.

Global warming, and exacerbated warming temperatures with humane activity, could impose novel conditions on the lives of many organisms. Of those, the behaviors and diets of solitary bees face adaptive stress as their optimal foraging conditions and preferred floral resources fluctuate. Trap nests m

Dispersal is an important individual decision which may influence individual fitness as well as population viability. The social cohesion hypothesis posits more social individuals remain at home, which is supported by prior work across taxa. However, how the sociality and connectivity of the group a

Abstract Insectivorous birds have ecologically important effects on prey abundance, behavior, and evolution, and through top‐down control, birds indirectly reduce herbivory and promote plant growth. While several studies sought to characterize biogeographic patterns in top‐down control by birds, var

Emitting alarm calls may be costly, but few studies have asked whether calling increases a caller's risk of predation and survival. Since observing animals calling and being killed is relatively rare, we capitalized on over 24,000 h of observations of marmot colonies and asked whether variation in t

Climate change threatens the close relationship between wildflowers and the hummingbirds that pollinate them, both through gradual warming that shifts and misaligns their phenologies, and also potentially through increasingly erratic day-to-day temperature changes, a phenomenon especially apparent a

The study of plant-insect interactions and pollination has just begun to scratch the surface of the microbes that inhabit many of the surfaces involved in these interactions. While most microbial studies have focused on the roles of obligate nectar yeasts in mediating pollinator behavior and fitness

Pollinator behavior is integral to understanding community network interactions. These interactions can serve as a proxy for community health. This study aims to compare the behavior between bumblebee pollinators and fly pollinators. This will take place around the area of Gothic, CO, at an elevatio

Social group structure often has consequences for individual fitness and ecological and evolutionary processes, but group structure is not fixed because of demographic processes: individuals die, disperse or are recruited into social groups. Thus, it is important to understand how demographic social

All animals must face predation risks at some points in their lives and individuals may vary in how much risk they are willing to accept. While it is well recognized that sociality is a way to manage risks, and social group size effects are well studied, the specific ways in which different types of

Abstract Ecotourism provides an opportunity to experience nature that may promote its conservation. Ecotourists photograph wildlife, and photography plays an important role in focusing public's attention on nature. Although photography is believed to be a low‐impact activity, how the visual stimulus

With global climates changing rapidly, animals must adapt to new environmental conditions with altered weather and phenology. The key to adapting to these new conditions is adjusting the timing of reproduction to maximize fitness. Using a long-term dataset on a wild population of yellow-bellied marm

The gut microbiome has a well-documented relationship with host fitness. Greater microbial diversity and abundance of specific microbes have been associated with improved fitness outcomes. Intestinal microbes also may be associated with patterns of social behaviour. However, these associations have

The distance at which animals move away from threats, flight initiation distance (FID), is often used to study antipredator behaviour and risk assessment. Variation in FID is explained by a variety of internal and external biotic and physical factors, including anthropogenic activities. Most prior s

plant ecologist , a limnologist, and a re- The vehide to convey McHarg's all - of Emerson and Thoreau. Then on to hu· source economist. Students arc required embracing personal vision has been a man behavior, the effects of environ- to have competence in the physical sci- course he ha been running f