– Javan Bauder –

Assistant Unit Leader, U.S. Geological Survey Arizona Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit

Understanding how species respond to natural and anthropogenic landscape features is important for not only understanding their basic ecology but also for their management and conservation. It is often helpful to think of species-landscape relationships in a hierarchical manner where relationships at the individual level translate into population- or species-level responses. Understanding these responses at the individual level can also inform the mechanisms by which landscapes affect species at higher biological levels. I provide several illustrations of how understanding individual-level responses to landscape features can help guide species conservation using the federally threatened eastern indigo snake as a case study. The eastern indigo snake is endemic to the southeastern United States and its declines are largely due to anthropogenic landscape alterations. I discuss the marked latitudinal differences in eastern indigo snake ecology between the northern and southern parts of their distribution, specifically their dependence upon gopher tortoise burrows for overwintering sites in the northern part of their distribution and the implications for conservation. I then discuss examples of how studying the ecology of eastern indigo snakes in central Florida has led to the development of spatially explicit management products providing information on habitat selection, population occurrence, and genetic connectivity. I close with an overview of ongoing research to identify eastern indigo snake conservation units and evaluate the viability of eastern indigo snake populations within those units.

Originally from the Pacific Northwest, Dr. Bauder earned his MS from Idaho State University studying the movement ecology of prairie rattlesnakes in central Idaho before moving to Georgia to study eastern indigo snakes as part of The Orianne Society, a nonprofit reptile conservation organization. He earned his PhD from the University of Massachusetts Amherst studying the population viability and connectivity of eastern indigo snakes in central Florida. Dr. Bauder then worked as postdoc with the Illinois Natural History Survey studying the population ecology of mammalian carnivores, and the Pennsylvania Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit studying the landscape genetics of white-tailed deer before joining the U.S. Geological Survey’s Arizona Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at the University of Arizona in Tucson in April 2021. Dr. Bauder’s current research focuses on answering research questions to provide information for wildlife management and conservation across taxa, using tools and concepts from population and landscape ecology. Dr. Bauder’s lab has worked on projects with bald eagles, narrow-headed and northern Mexican gartersnakes, Gambel’s quail, American black bear, American bullfrogs, and lowland and Chiricahua leopard frogs. Dr. Bauder continues collaborating on eastern indigo snake research, which will be the subject of his seminar with THS.