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Captive breeding to augment wild animal populations is an important tool in the recovery of imperiled species, but low post-release survival and substantial program expenses require methodologies that maximize utility. We evaluated post-release survival of captive-reared Allegheny woodrats ( N eotoma magister) introduced into a declining metapopulation in southern Indiana. We hard-released 16 captive-reared woodrats in 2011 and soft-released 14 woodrats in 2012, while monitoring parallel samples of 16 and 17 wild-born individuals in each year, respectively. We obtained Kaplan- Meier estimates of survivorship for both groups and used Cox proportional hazards regression to estimate the association between survival and rearing environment (wild or captive), release strategy, sex, body condition and age at release. We quantified movement patterns and related the results of survival models to behavioral tendencies. Survivorship of wild-born individuals was consistently higher than captive-reared individuals. Patterns of survival were best explained by rearing environment and its interaction with time, although disparities in survival between wild-born and captive-reared animals decreased over time. Higher mortality among captive-reared individuals may have been due to more exploratory behavior, as captive-reared woodrats used more dens and traveled farther among successive relocations than wild-born conspecifics. Soft-released individuals had higher initial survival rates and tended to choose dens similar to those of wild individuals, providing evidence that this strategy eased the transition to a wild environment. We recommend future programs use soft-release techniques but also explore other pre-release preparatory strategies such as anti-predator conditioning and environmental enrichment to increase survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives To determine whether adult minority patients with medically refractory temporal lobe epilepsy ( TLE) experience significantly longer times to anterior temporal lobectomy ( ATL) following presurgical evaluation. Methods A retrospective cohort study of 223 adult patients with epilepsy ( PWE) and unilateral mesial temporal sclerosis who completed presurgical evaluation in the epilepsy monitoring unit at University of California, San Francisco, between January 1, 1993 and December 31, 2010, with follow-up through December 31, 2012. Log-rank test was performed for Kaplan-Meier survival curves of time to ATL stratified by race/ethnicity and by limited English proficiency ( LEP). Adjusted hazard ratios ( HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated using Cox proportional hazards and Weibull modeling. Results African Americans ( AAs) and Asian/ Pacific Islanders ( Asian/ PIs) experienced significantly longer times to surgery than whites in Kaplan- Meier plots (log-rank test p = 0.02 and p = 0.005, respectively). AAs and Asian/ PIs also had longer times to surgery after adjusting for frailty, LEP, sex, age, mesial temporal sclerosis ( MTS) laterality, and nonconcordant ictal electroencephalography ( EEG) (adjusted HR = 0.22, p = 0.006; adjusted HR = 0.25, p = 0.003, respectively). Patients with LEP experienced significantly longer times to surgery than patients proficient in English (log-rank test p = 0.0085; adjusted HR = 0.48, p = 0.041). In Cox modeling, nonconcordant ictal EEG studies (adjusted HR = 0.47, p = 0.01), left-sided MTS (adjusted HR = 0.69, p = 0.023), and female sex (adjusted HR = 0.72, p = 0.048) were risk factors for longer times to surgery. Significance A A and Asian/ PI patients as well as those with LEP have significantly longer times to ATL following presurgical evaluation. Future studies should be aimed at identifying the source of these disparities and developing targeted interventions to address them. A PowerPoint slide summarizing this article is available for download in the Supporting Information section . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]