Casey 
Weissburg
Ph.D. Comprehensive Exam
Advisor: Dr. Michael Wunder
When: Friday, February 13, 2026
Where: Science Classroom, Room 1111
Time: 8:00am
Age-and Season-Specific Demographic Rates for the Mountain Plover: Variation Between Populations and Across the Annual Cycle
Pinpointing what factors drive population change requires understanding variance in demographic rates over time and across the geographic range, especially demographics for which population growth is most sensitive. For the Mountain plover, a grassland-breeding shorebird of long-standing conservation concern, population growth rates are most elastic to changes in adult survival during migration and chick survival, yet studies of these demographic rates remain limited in spatiotemporal scale and the scope of limiting factors considered. My dissertation aims to fill the resultant gaps of information on age- and season-specific survival by leveraging data from two geographically separated populations that breed in Colorado, to explore demographic variation across part of the species range and across the full annual cycle. The first two chapters will estimate 1) survival rates of dependent precocial chicks and 2) season-specific survival rates of adults, as functions of intrinsic and extrinsic factors hypothesized to be associated with survival in migratory shorebirds. The third chapter will expand our knowledge of range wide variation in demographic rates by generating the first estimates of age-specific annual survival and emigration for a high-elevation population of the plover. This work will provide information on demographics for key periods of the life cycle and annual cycle that are currently lacking and identify the extent of seasonal or regional differences in survival, to better inform local and range-wide allocation of time and resources for the management of the species in Colorado and beyond.