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Northern bobwhites (Colinus virginianus) are small quails in the New World Quail family (Odontophoridae) and are one of the most phenotypically diverse avian species. Despite extensive research on bobwhite ecology, genomic studies investigating the evolution of phenotypic diversity in this species are lacking. Here, we present a new, highly contiguous assembly for bobwhites using tissue samples from a vouchered, wild, female bird collected in Louisiana. By performing a de novo assembly and scaffolding the assembly with Dovetail Chicago and HiC libraries and the HiRise pipeline, we produced an 866.8 Mb assembly including 1,512 scaffolds with a scaffold N50 of 66.8 Mb, a scaffold L90 of 17, and a BUSCO completeness score of 90.8%. This new assembly represents approximately 96% of the non-repetitive and 84% of the entire bobwhite genome size, greatly improves scaffold lengths and contiguity compared to an existing draft bobwhite genome, and provides an important tool for future studies of evolutionary and functional genomics in bobwhites.

Northern bobwhites (Colinus virginianus) are small quails in the New World Quail family (Odontophoridae) and are one of the most phenotypically diverse avian species. Despite extensive research on bobwhite ecology, genomic studies investigating the evolution of phenotypic diversity in this species are lacking. Here, we present a new, highly contiguous assembly for bobwhites using tissue samples from a vouchered, wild, female bird collected in Louisiana. Using Dovetail Chicago and HiC libraries with the HiRise assembly pipeline, we produced an 866.8 Mbp assembly including 1,512 scaffolds with a contig N50 of 66.8 Mbp, a scaffold L50 of four, and a BUSCO completeness score of 90.8%. This new assembly greatly improves scaffold lengths and contiguity compared to an existing draft bobwhite genome and provides an important tool for future studies of evolutionary and functional genomics in bobwhites.

The opening of the Morganza Spillway in Louisiana on 18 May 2011 to relieve historic flooding along the lower Mississippi river subsequently inundated thousands of acres of bottomland forest in the Atchafalaya basin. Since 2001, we have conducted Meleagris gallopavo silvestris (Eastern Wild Turkey) population ecology research on the Sherburne Wildlife Management Area, located approximately 30 km south of the Morganza spillway. In expectation of the Morganza spillway opening, between 11 and 14 May, we captured and fitted 5 (1 M, 4 F) adult Eastern Wild Turkeys with µGPS transmitters to monitor turkey response to basin flooding. By 19 May 2011, our study area was inundated with >3 m of flood waters, and remained completely inundated until 11 June 2011. Via radio-telemetry, we confirmed one female was depredated immediately before flood waters inundated our study site, and one female survived and reached dry ground created by receding water on 16 June. A second female lived 21 days and made circuito...

Spring harvest is a primary mortality factor for male eastern wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo silvestris), but the relationship between spring harvest regimes and annual survival is not well understood. We banded 462 male wild turkeys from 1989 to 2007 in southeastern Louisiana to estimate annual survival and band recovery rates relative to spring harvest. We evaluated these parameters under a liberal harvest season (3-bird limit; 1989–1997) and a reduced conservative harvest season (2-bird limit; 2000–2007). Estimated recovery rates during the liberal season were 0.75 (SE = 0.05) for adults and 0.63 (SE = 0.04) for juveniles, and recovery rates during the conservative season were 0.61 (SE = 0.04) and 0.48 (SE = 0.05) for adults and juveniles, respectively. Annual survival averaged 0.16 (SE = 0.05) and 0.43 (SE = 0.05) for adults and juveniles, respectively, during the liberal season. Conversely, during the conservative season, annual survival averaged 0.31 (SE = 0.05) and 0.56 (SE = 0.05) for adults and juveniles, respectively. Our findings suggest that bag limit reductions combined with a reduction in season length contributed to a 2-fold increase in annual survival for male wild turkeys. We contend that male wild turkeys were likely over harvested on our study area during the liberal harvest season, which contributed to exceptionally low annual survival rates. Managers should attempt to assess survival rates of male wild turkeys in harvested populations to properly manage spring harvest and develop appropriate harvest limits. © 2012 The Wildlife Society.