Biology subjects

Pearson, A. E.

Publications and source records attributed to Pearson, A. E..

2 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

A workflow to gather, clean, and standardize species occurrence records at scale for conservation applications

Biodiversity declines and pressing threats to wildlife necessitate data-driven approaches for conservation and management planning. Natural resource agencies, conservation practitioners, and researchers increasingly leverage digital species occurrence records. However, we still lack user-friendly and flexible tools to aggregate, clean, and standardize such data. These tools are particularly needed for speciose groups like invertebrates and plants whose natural histories are poorly or unevenly known. To provide such a tool and overcome limitations of existing options, we developed a workflow in R that encompasses the entire process of aggregating, cleaning, and standardizing occurrence records within one free software platform. It additionally can return information useful for assessing species' conservation status. Key features include user friendliness, flexibility in data sources and filtering, handling large volumes of data or multiple species, and high transparency. We demonstrate workflow functionality focusing on Texas native bees. We combined bee data from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and several smaller datasets, then cleaned and standardized the combined dataset including removing duplicates. Processing 145,870 bee records took about an hour on a standard-configuration government computer. We used the resulting records in three case studies that demonstrated various uses conservation practitioners commonly implement. Case study 1 compiled a species list for Denton County, the second described phenology of bumble bees (Bombus genus) in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, and the third assessed conservation status of Bombus pensylvanicus. Our workflow greatly facilitates addressing a range of questions at various spatial and temporal scales from one vetted dataset that are tailored to the needs of a specific research objective, management question, municipality, or audience.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2026

Diversifying stocking practices within rangelands supports diverse plant-pollinator communities and interactions

Understanding how management alters species' biodiversity and interactions is critical for sustainable agriculture. This can be especially important for rangelands, grasslands used for livestock grazing that cover 30% of land worldwide. In rangelands, ranchers need to maximize livestock production while supporting healthy ecosystems. Grazing management can alter the impact of livestock by varying grazing timing and intensity, but its ecological impacts remain poorly understood. One critical function that may be supported in these systems is pollination; how rangeland management may alter this ecosystem service is not systematically understood. We investigated how rotational stocking, where livestock are rotated among pastures, affected plant and pollinator communities and plant-pollinator interactions using working ranches in the Southern Great Plains. Sites were managed through continuous stocking or rotation with low or high frequency. We found that high-frequency livestock rotation supported greater flower abundance, and consequently greater pollinator abundance. Pollinator orders varied in their responses to management with Hymenoptera directly responding to management, and Coleoptera and Lepidoptera responding indirectly via changes in flower abundance. Community-level changes produced more specialized interaction networks and higher interaction diversity. These community changes, and resulting species turnover, led to high interaction turnover across rangeland sites. This suggests that a mosaic of management strategies likely diversifies habitat and helps support plant and pollinator biodiversity at the landscape scale. This study demonstrates that rangelands can support plants, pollinators, and their interactions, particularly when managed with high-frequency rotational stocking.

ecology↗