Table 1.
Study site characteristics.
Fig 1.
Source sites and translocation sites.
Geographic representation of the relationships between both S1 and T1 (top panel) and S2 and T2 (lower panel), shown with the dams blocking hellbender migration between the source sites and translocation sites. Spatial files sourced from USGS National Map Viewer.
Table 2.
Individual metrics and fates.
Fig 2.
Boxplots displaying (A) the distribution of sedentariness proportions, (B) average daily movement sizes, (C) total distances traveled, and (D) linear home range sizes for eastern hellbenders in this study, grouped by cohort (blue = cohort 1 [S1 & T1], green = cohort 2 [S2 & T2]; light colors = source sites, dark colors = translocation sites). Letters above the boxplots indicate results of a Tukey’s post-hoc test to test for significant differences between the means, with different letters indicating there is a significant difference (p < 0.05).
Table 3.
Movement metrics by site.
Fig 3.
Distribution of hellbender locations at translocation sites.
Histograms with density curves of all hellbender locations along the river at both T1 (A) and T2 (B) shown in relation to the release sites (dotted green lines). The most downstream hellbender location recorded during the study at each site was assigned a value of 0, and all other locations were a subsequent “distance up the river” (in meters) from that point. The more frequently that hellbenders were tracked to a certain location along the river, the greater the area under the density curve at that location.
Fig 4.
Linear home ranges and dispersal directions.
Individual hellbender linear home ranges (grey) shown in relation to release sites (0 axis) and compared to the dispersal directions of these same individuals (striped). Dispersal here is defined as the distance traveled from the release site to the center of their established core home range. Each horizontal bar on the y-axis represents an individual translocated hellbender. The values along the x-axis represent the distance traveled along the stream path. Movements downstream from release sites are given negative values.
Table 4.
Average home range estimates by site.
Table 5.
Top-ranked spatial models.
Table 6.
Sedentariness model parameters.
Fig 5.
Sedentariness model predictions.
Model predicted effects of (A) average cover rock size & (B) cover rock densities on the sedentariness of all eastern hellbenders in this study, grouped by translocation status and cohort. Red solid lines indicated the predicted effects on hellbenders in cohort 1, whereas blue dashed lines show predicted effects on hellbenders in cohort 2. Predicted effects are plotted for entire the range of observed rock size and rock density values across all treatments in the study, whereas shaded areas show the 95% confidence intervals for the entire range of measured rock attributes across all treatments.
Table 7.
LHR parameter estimates.