Mammal collection housed at The Rocky Mountain Bioloagical Laboratory. Most specimens are student preparations from Mammalogy course taught at RMBL since ca. 1949.

The overwhelming majority of research on wild bumble bees has focused on the social colony stage. Nest-founding queens in the early season are difficult to study because incipient nests are challenging to find in the wild, and the foundress queen's flight period is very short relative to the entire

Climate change and its resulting effects on seasonality are known to alter a variety of animal behaviors including those related to foraging, phe- nology, and migration. Although many studies focus on the impacts of phenological changes on physiology or fitness enhancing behaviors, fewer have invest

The overwhelming majority of research on wild bumble bees has focused on the social colony stage. Nest-­founding queens in the early season are difficult to study because incipient nests are challenging to find in the wild and the foundress queen flight period is very short relative to the entire ne

The summer is a peak tourism season in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, but is also the breeding season for many montane bird species, resulting in an increase in bird-human interactions and coexistence. I measured the effect that human activity has on the flight initiation behavior of two montane bird

Salamanders have been used in a variety of different experiments to determine the health of various ecosystems. Biofluorescence was recently studied in amphibians in a study done in 2020. Not much is known about all its functions, more studies are needed to fully understand how it works and how it c

The Arizona Tiger Salamander (Ambystoma mavortium nebulosa) is a keystone species in the Rocky Mountains. Depending on how well they grow as larvae, these salamanders can either metamorphose to have terrestrial traits at maturity or retain their juvenile aquatic traits as adults. We expect that pond

Mountain White-crowned Sparrows and Wilson’s Warblers rely on foraging microhabitats in montane wet meadows during the breeding season to find food for themselves and their offspring. The microhabitats are comprised of vegetation, which can be food itself, but it can also be a substrate for inverteb

Dispersal is common in mammals and can have an important role in shaping demography, genetics, distribution, and social structure. Dispersal entails potential costs but also potential benefits, and the dispersal decision is thought to be conditional; the potential disperser assesses prospects for su

The period before sexual maturity is a sensitive life stage where most development and change occur. Studies in humans and other animals show that early adverse experiences contribute to poor health and survival. However, the mechanisms are still unclear. Some have found that early life adversity (E

Abstract This data release includes a list of high-priority hazardous faults and associated spatial data (regional polygons and buffered fault traces) for the Intermountain West (IMW) region of the United States. These are the top five faults or regions of concern per IMW state, based on the 2025 (v

By migrating, ungulates take advantage of cyclical fluctuations in resources, which allows them to persist at greater population numbers than they would in the absence of these seasonal movements. We sought to identify the drivers of spring elk (Cervus canadensis) migration and evaluate how well ind

Deer are prolific herbivores that, if left to increase exponentially, could decimate populations of plants and possibly other herbivores. Due to the rapidly increasing abundance of deer, this is a risk that is getting ever closer to becoming a reality. This phenomenon is a concern for herbivores tha

Nitrogen is a critical element in biological systems, with its cycling increasingly influenced by human activities, particularly in agriculture. In Colorado, where 50% of land is used for agriculture, cattle grazing may impact the ecosystems of montane and subalpine ponds inhabited by Ambystoma mavo

The gut microbiome has a well-documented relationship with host fitness, physiology, and behavior. However, most of what is known comes from captive animals where diets and environments are more homogeneous or controlled. Studies in wild populations that experience dynamic environments and have natu

Across animal systems, abiotic environmental features, including timing of seasonal events and weather patterns, affect fitness. An individual’s degree of social integration also has fitness consequences, but we lack an understanding of how abiotic features relate to patterns of individual sociality

The webfooted rodent deserves some praise, claim two scientists B= are pretty scarce in the Beaver State these days, but it wasn’t always that way. It’s estimated that in the mid-nineteenth century there were nearly a million beavers in Oregon. Today, there are an estimated 68,000. Reasons for the d