Abstracts

Q.4-01: Bluebills and bayou bivalves: hurricane-driven trophic cascades affect wintering abundance of Lesser Scaup in Louisiana

by Clay M. Stroud, School of Renewable Natural Resources, Louisiana State University AgCenter, Baton Rouge, LA, et al

Presented by Kevin M. Ringelman - Email: kringelman@agcenter.lsu.edu

The estuaries of Louisiana overwinter a continentally-significant proportion of Lesser Scaup (Aythya affinis; colloquially, bluebills), a species of conservation concern since population declines began in the 1980s. Thirty-eight years of aerial wate...

Q.4-02: Changes in Waterfowl Abundance and Species Composition in Coastal Louisiana

by James M. Whitaker, Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge, Coastal and Nongame Resource Division, Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, Grand Chenier, LA, et al

Presented by Joseph R. Marty - Email: jmarty@wlf.la.gov

Coastal Louisiana supports more than one quarter of the continental dabbling duck population during winter. Thus, considerable effort is allocated to monitoring waterfowl abundance in coastal Louisiana with implications for future waterfowl research ...

Q.4-03: Use of banding age ratios to characterize drivers of temporal variation in fecundity

by Hannah Specht, Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, Minnesota, et al

Presented by Todd Arnold - Email: arnol065@umn.edu

Fecundity estimates for demographic modeling are difficult to acquire at the regional spatial scales that correspond to climate shifts, land use impacts or habitat management programs, yet are important for evaluating such effects. Widely available a...

Q.4-04: Combining professional and citizen data sets to quantify spatiotemporal dynamics of the Sandhill Crane

by Clara Casabona I Amat, Dep. sciences du bois et de la foret, Universite Laval, Quebec, Quebec, et al

Presented by Marcel Darveau - Email: m_darveau@ducks.ca

The eastern population of Sandhill Crane (Antigone canadensis) is showing an increasing trend since the 1980s, and its geographic range is expanding. More opportunistic than most waterfowl species, this wetland-nester feeds also in agricultural land....

Q.4-05: Estimating Contributions to Continental Fecundity in Northern Pintails

by Dennis Kim, Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN, et al

Presented by Dennis Dongmin Kim - Email: kimx3725@umn.edu

Vulnerability-adjusted age ratios at harvest are widely used to estimate fecundity in hunted populations of birds. However, one drawback to using this method for migratory waterfowl is that fecundity represents a mixture of all contributing source po...

Q.4-06: Changes in winter goose abundance and distribution in the Central and Mississippi flyways 19552018

by James M. Whitaker, Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries , et al

Presented by James M. Whitaker - Email: jwhitaker@wlf.la.gov

Lesser snow geese (Anser caerulescens), Rosss geese (A. rossii) (collectively, light geese), and greater white-fronted geese (A. albifrons) historically wintered in the Central Valley of California and coastal Louisiana and Texas. However, recent mid...

Q.4-07: Evaluating dynamics of habitat resource availability for Lesser Scaup at Pools 13 and 19 of the Mississippi River

by Lauren D. Larson, Department of Biological Sciences, Western Illinois University, Macomb, IL, et al

Presented by Lauren D. Larson - Email: l-larson@wiu.edu

The Lesser scaup (Aythya affinis; hereafter, scaup) is an omnivorous diving duck listed as a focal species of concern in the Midwest. Since the 1970s, the continental scaup population has declined notably, with numbers well below the 6.3 million goa...

Q.4-08: Impact of preharvest mortality on waterfowl population estimation using Lincolns method

by Evan G. Cooch, Department of Natural Resources, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY , et al

Presented by Ray T. Alisauskas - Email: ray.alisauskas@canada.ca

Banding waterfowl, in combination with the citizen science provided by hunters that report marks from harvested birds, is a long-standing, institutionalized practice for estimating probabilities of survival and exploitation, i.e., harvest from such p...

Q.4-09: Reproductive consequences of climate variability in migratory birds: evidence for species-specific responses to spring phenology and cross-seasonal effects

by Amelia J. Raquel, Ducks Unlimited, Inc., Susanville, CA & University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, et al

Presented by Amelia J. Raquel - Email: araquel@ducks.org

Climate change is altering global temperature and precipitation regimes, and the ability of species to respond to these changes could have serious implications for population dynamics. Flexible species may adjust breeding dates in response to advance...

Q.4-10: Scaup Banding on Great South Bay, Long Island, New York

by Jake Chronister, State University of New York College of Environmental Sciences and Forestry, Syracuse, NY, et al

Presented by Jake Chronister - Email: Chronisterjake@gmail.com

Historically, tens of thousands of greater scaup (Aythya marila) wintered at Great South Bay, Long Island, New York but this population declined to near zero by the early 1990s. Since super-storm Sandy in 2012, numbers of wintering scaup increased su...

Q.4-11: Survival and recovery rates of Canada geese in urban areas of Iowa

by Ben Luukkonen, Iowa State University, et al

Presented by Ben Luukkonen - Email: bzluukko@iastate.edu

Temperate-breeding Canada goose (Branta Canadensis maxima) populations have increased to historic levels, providing social, ecological, and economic value. However, human-goose conflict including reduced water quality, damaged landscape aesthetics, c...