Martin Hamel, doctoral student, will defend his dissertation, "Determining Scaphirhynchus Sturgeon Population Demographics and Dynamics: Implications for Range-Wide Management, Recovery and Conservation" at 1 p.m., Nov. 22 in 901 Hardin Hall.
Hamel's abstract: Sturgeons (Acipenseridae) have experienced world-wide declines as a result of anthropogenic effects such as over-harvest, habitat degradation, altered flow regimes, and pollution. Nearly all European and Asian sturgeon species have experienced population declines and have subsequently been classified as either threatened or endangered. North American sturgeons have experienced a similar plight in that all eight native sturgeon species are listed as endangered, threatened, or of special concern. Direct linkages between North American sturgeon declines and anthropogenic effects are difficult to assess due to scale considerations, fluctuating environmental conditions, difficulty in capture, and the interaction of all these effects. To recover, restore, or maintain abundance of these species across their range, thorough knowledge of life history characteristics or strategies, population dynamics, and population connectivity for each species is imperative. In this dissertation, I use data from local (Platte and Missouri Rivers, Nebraska) to nearly range-wide scales to describe components of Scaphirhynchus sturgeon population dynamics and demographics and assess various analyses typically used for calculation of dynamic rate functions.