Taylor Edwards

Despite an historical connection between the arts and sciences, in the past century, the two disciplines have been greatly siloed. However, there is a renewed interest in collaboration across the arts and sciences to support conservation practice by understanding and communicating complex environmental, social, and cultural challenges in novel ways. 6&6 was created as a transdisciplinary art–science initiative to promote a deeper appreciation of the Sonoran Desert. Six artists and six scientists were paired to create work that explored conservation issues in the Sonoran Desert and the Gulf of California. In-depth interviews were conducted with the artists and scientists throughout the 4-year initiative to understand the impact of 6&6 on their personal and professional behaviors and outlook. The findings from this case study reveal the role that intensive, place-based, and transdisciplinary art–science programs can play in shaping narratives to better communicate the patterns and processes of nature and human–environment interactions.

Evolutionary biology often seeks to decipher the drivers of speciation, and much debate persists over the relative importance of isolation and gene flow in the formation of new species. Genetic studies of closely related species can assess if gene flow was present during speciation, because signatures of past introgression often persist in the genome. We test hypotheses on which mechanisms of speciation drove diversity among three distinct lineages of desert tortoise in the genus Gopherus. These lineages offer a powerful system to study speciation, because different biogeographic patterns (physical vs. ecological segregation) are observed at opposing ends of their distributions. We use 82 samples collected from 38 sites, representing the entire species' distribution and generate sequence data for mtDNA and four nuclear loci. A multilocus phylogenetic analysis in *BEAST estimates the species tree. RNA-seq data yield 20,126 synonymous variants from 7665 contigs from two individual...

In the Sonoran Desert, Gopherus agassizii occurs in rocky foothills associated with saguaro cactus (Carnegiea gigantea) and foothill paloverde (Parkinsonia microphylla) characteristic of Upland Sonoran Desert Scrub plant community (Turner and Brown 1992. Pages 180-221 in Brown 1992. Desert Plants 4). Although these populations appear to be isolated by low desert valleys, radiotelemetry data have shown that tortoises are capable of making long distance movements between populations (Barrett et al. 1990. Final report, Bureau of Reclamation, Arizona Projects Office, Phoenix; Averill-Murray and Klug 2000. Technical Report 161, Arizona Game and Fish Dept., Phoenix). Long-distance movements between disjunct populations may facilitate genetic exchange (Britten et al. 1997. Copeia 1997:523-530) and be important for long-term maintenance of populations. Here we report an extraordinary movement by a female G. agassizii and the anthropogenic barriers encountered during this event. We show that...

The Bolson tortoise (Gopherus flavomarginatus) is the first species of extirpated megafauna to be repatriated into the United States. In September 2006, 30 individuals were translocated from Arizona to New Mexico with the long-term objective of restoring wild populations via captive propagation. We evaluated mtDNA sequences and allelic diversity among 11 microsatellite loci from the captive population and archived samples collected from wild individuals in Durango, Mexico (n = 28). Both populations exhibited very low genetic diversity and the captive population captured roughly 97.5% of the total wild diversity, making it a promising founder population. Genetic screening of other captive animals (n = 26) potentially suitable for reintroduction uncovered multiple hybrid G. flavomarginatus×G. polyphemus, which were ineligible for repatriation; only three of these individuals were verified as purebred G. flavomarginatus. We used these genetic data to inform mate pairing, reduce the pot...

ABSTRACT The conservation of tortoises poses a unique situation because several threatened species are commonly kept as pets within their native ranges. Thus, there is potential for captive populations to be a reservoir for repatriation efforts. We assess the utility of captive populations of the threatened Agassiz’s desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) for recovery efforts based on genetic affinity to local areas. We collected samples from 130 captive desert tortoises from three desert communities: two in California (Ridgecrest and Joshua Tree) and the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center (Las Vegas) in Nevada. We tested all samples for 25 short tandem repeats and sequenced 1,109 bp of the mitochondrial genome. We compared captive genotypes to a database of 1,258 Gopherus samples, including 657 wild caught G. agassizii spanning the full range of the species. We conducted population assignment tests to determine the genetic origins of the captive individuals. For our total sample set, only 44 % of captive individuals were assigned to local populations based on genetic units derived from the reference database. One individual from Joshua Tree, California, was identified as being a Morafka’s desert tortoise, G. morafkai, a cryptic species which is not native to the Mojave Desert. Our data suggest that captive desert tortoises kept within the native range of G. agassizii cannot be presumed to have a genealogical affiliation to wild tortoises in their geographic proximity. Precautions should be taken before considering the release of captive tortoises into the wild as a management tool for recovery.