NREM Seminar Series, Dr. Steve Hess

Title of Presentation:
A Research Program in Wildlife Population Dynamics on Hawai`i Island

Abstract of Presentation:
Wildlife population dynamics deals with the changing characteristics of populations over space and/or time. One of the most fundamental characteristics of any population that we can know is absolute abundance at a single point in time. However, abundance is surprisingly difficult to determine, may change quickly, and we rarely have access to the gold standard; changes in abundance over long periods of time. Therefore, we often deal with a surrogate, or an index of abundance.

An index is defined as any measurable correlate of abundance, and is generally much less expensive to determine than absolute abundance. Examples of abundance surveys include different types of large animal surveys from aircraft, while index surveys may rely on evidence of presence from tracks, scat, or browse.

Genetics can provide another powerful surrogate that may even bypass abundance altogether to get at questions of immigration, emigration and sex-biased dispersal in source-sink population dynamics.

Finally, knowledge of how reproduction or survival changes with overall abundance can be used to address density dependence, the Alee effect, and how populations are regulated. Each of these processes will be illustrated by three species of wild mammals from Hawai`i Island.

Bio data for speaker introduction:
Steve Hess and began his biology career in South Florida at Mote Marine Laboratory as a teenager fishing for sharks. He studied seabirds and neotropical migrant birds in New England, the Gulf Coast, and then tropical forest ecology in Central America, receiving a MS in forestry from the University of Montana in 1995.

After studying Hawaiian birds for several years, Steve developed a population monitoring scheme for the Yellowstone bison and received a PhD in wildlife biology from Montana State University in 2002.

He then returned to Hawai'i to work for USGS as a research wildlife biologist where he currently conducts research on several species of native and non-native wildlife.

Event Sponsor
NREM, Manoa Campus

More Information
Lois Agena, 808-956-7530, laagena@hawaii.edu

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