David Ford Publishes Unionid Article
Mr. David Ford in our O’Fallon, Missouri office is co-author on a newly published paper on unionids entitled “High-Resolution Ecological Niche Modelling of Threatened Freshwater Mussels in East Texas, USA”. The paper focuses on using US Geological Survey data to produce predicative models of mussel habitat, and on the accuracy of these models, especially for listed mussel species in Texas. Mr. Ford’s major contribution was on ground truthing the models by going to predicted locations and seeing if specific unionid species were present, and then refining the models. These methods can help conservationists focus their efforts towards specific locations to provide the largest amount of protection for the greatest number of species. The paper is in the journal “Aquatic Conservation Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems” and is currently online. An open source version will be available soon but for anyone that wants to read it here is a link: