Peter J. Morin

Network topology and patch connectivity affect dynamics in experimental and model metapopulations

Journal of Animal Ecology · 2021 · 21 citations

Biological populations are rarely isolated in space and instead interact with others via dispersal in metapopulations. Theory predicts that network connectivity patterns can have critical effects on network robustness, as certain topologies, such as scale-free networks, are more tolerant to disturbances than other patterns. However, at present, experimental evidence of how these topologies affect population dynamics in a metapopulation framework is lacking. We used experimental metapopulations o…

The impact of anthropogenic disturbance and climate change on the distribution of Dekay’s brown snake (<i>Storeria dekayi</i>)

Biological Journal of the Linnean Society · 2024-06-17 · 2 citations

Abstract Human activities in the Anthropocene contribute to natural resource and climatic pattern shifts, which in turn affect the distributions of organisms. Currently, research efforts to understand organismal distribution patterns mainly focus on rare species, leaving common taxa to receive less attention. We constructed ecological niche models using MaxEnt to evaluate the distributions of a common urban reptile, Dekay’s brown snake (Storeria dekayi). We investigate the importance of human di…

Population Estimation of an Urban-Adapted Snake

Ichthyology & Herpetology · 2025-03-01 · 1 citations

Accurate estimation of the abundance of many snake species is often compromised by their secretive and elusive nature, which lowers the probability of recapturing marked individuals. However, urban-dwelling populations of Dekay’s Brownsnake ( Storeria dekayi ) often congregate at high densities in fragmented edge habitats, making them unusually good models for estimating abundance using mark–recapture techniques. We used a mark–recapture modeling approach to estimate the population size of S. de…

Environmental Factors Affecting Movement Patterns of Small Urban-Adapted Snakes

Journal of Herpetology · 2025-06-23 · 1 citations

Urbanization creates a dense network of paved roads that alters and degrades natural landscapes. Yet, the resulting fragmented terrains still provide essential habitats for a wide variety of urban-adapted taxa. Dekay's Brownsnakes (Storeria dekayi) are urban dwellers that frequently occur at high densities in anthropogenically disturbed environments. However, S. dekayi also exhibit en masse migration during fall, which renders them susceptible to road mortality when migration routes traverse urb…

Interpopulation morphological differences and sexual dimorphism of Dekay’s brownsnake (<i>Storeria dekayi</i>) along a rural–urban gradient

PeerJ · 2025-06-11

In response to the surge of urbanization in the modern era, many organisms have undergone various changes, such as the shift of their morphological traits to face the challenges brought by this drastic environmental transformation. Rapid adaptive evolution in the morphology of urban-dwelling organisms has been documented in a broad array of taxa, such as lizards and birds, by comparing urban populations with their nonurban counterparts. However, relevant studies concerning more elusive and secre…