Barnes Lab PhD student, Beth Roesler, enjoys conducting research that not only produces tangible conservation benefits, but also provides insight into conservation, management, and research tools which could have broad impact across studies, applications, and ecosystems. Recently, Roesler has been developing models to identify suitable habitat (and prioritize conservation targets) for the Dwarf Seahorse within the Gulf of Mexico, and she has been learning potentially generalizable lessons about species distribution modeling in the process. The Outdoor News Bulletin recently highlighted Roesler’s developing research, which they introduce by saying,
Seahorses are facing global population declines due to a combination of overfishing, habitat loss, and habitat degradation regularly occurring along densely inhabited coastal areas. However, conservation of these unique and charismatic species is often hindered by a poor understanding of their distribution and habitat requirements. Collaborators at the USGS Hawai’i Cooperative Fishery Research Unit, Texas Tech University, and Texas Parks and Wildlife are assessing the status of Dwarf Seahorse (Hippocampus zosterae) on the Texas coast. The goal of the research is to identify the locations of suitable habitat to target conservation efforts, and researchers have found that when conducting such work, data sources matter.
The full feature can be accessed at https://wildlifemanagement.institute/outdoor-news-bulletin/july-2018/data-sources-matter-case-study-dwarf-seahorse.