Capturing Spatiotemporal Patterns in Presence-Absence Data to Inform Monitoring and Sampling Designs for the Threatened Dakota Skipper (Lepidoptera: Hesperiidae) in the Great Plains of the United States.

Declines among species of insect pollinators, especially butterflies, has garnered attention from scientists and managers. Often these declines have spurred governments to declare some species as threatened or endangered. We used existing presence-absence data from surveys for the threatened Dakota skipper Hesperia dacotae (Skinner) to build statistical maps of species presence that could be used to inform future monitoring designs. We developed a hierarchical Bayesian modeling approach to estimate the spatial distribution and temporal trend in Dakota skipper probability of presence. Our model included a spatial random effect and fixed effects for the proportion of two grassland habitat types: those on well-drained soils and those on poorly drained soils; as well as the topographic slope. The results from this model were then used to assess sampling strategies with two different monitoring objectives: locating new Dakota skipper colonies or monitoring the proportion of historically (pre-2000) extant colonies. Our modeling results suggested that the distribution of Dakota skippers followed the distribution of remnant grasslands and that probabilities of presence tended to be higher in topographically diverse grasslands with well-drained soils. Our analysis also showed that the probability of presence declined throughout the northern Great Plains range. Our simulations of the different sampling designs suggested that new detections were expected when sampling where Dakota skippers likely occurred historically, but this may lead to a tradeoff with monitoring existing sites. Prior information about the extant sites may help to ameliorate this tradeoff.

Helping Yourself by Offering Help: Mediators of Expressive Helping in Survivors of Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant.

BACKGROUND: A randomized experiment by Rini et al. (Health Psychol. 33(12):1541-1551, 2014) demonstrated that expressive helping, which involves three expressive writing sessions regarding hematopoietic stem cell transplant, followed by one writing session directed toward helping other stem cell transplant recipients, reduced psychological distress and bothersome physical symptoms among stem cell transplant recipients with elevated survivorship problems, relative to a neutral writing control condition. PURPOSE: The current study evaluated whether word use reflective of emotional expression, cognitive processing, and change in perspective mediates the effects of expressive helping. METHOD: The essays of 67 stem cell transplant recipients with high survivorship problems were analyzed with Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count. Multiple mediation modeling was used to test the hypothesized mechanisms of expressive helping on distress and bothersome physical symptoms. RESULTS: Relative to the control condition, expressive helping produced significant reductions in psychological distress and marginal reductions in physical symptom bother in the analyzed subset of participants from the parent study. Results indicated that positive emotion word use significantly mediated effects of expressive helping on reduced distress, but only for participants who used average (compared to above or below average) rates of negative emotion words. Cognitive processing and change in perspective did not significantly mediate benefits of expressive helping. CONCLUSIONS: Expressive helping carried its positive effects on distress through participants' higher expression of positive emotions when coupled with moderate rates of negative emotions. Findings highlight the benefit of expressing both positive and negative emotions in stressful situations.

Economic survivorship stress is associated with poor health-related quality of life among distressed survivors of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.

BACKGROUND: Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation is a demanding cancer treatment associated with enduring physical and psychological complications. Survivors' well-being may be further compromised by exposure to chronic stressors common to this population, including difficulties arising from costly medical care, changes in employment status, and health insurance coverage. Thus, we hypothesized that financial, employment, and insurance stressors (collectively referred to as economic survivorship stressors) would be associated with poorer health-related quality of life (HRQOL) among hematopoietic stem cell transplantation survivors. METHODS: Survivors (n = 181; M = 640 days post-transplant) completed the measures of study variables through mailed questionnaires and telephone interviews. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to test the hypothesized associations between economic survivorship stressors and HRQOL, and to examine whether social and situational factors interact with survivors' stress perceptions to predict HRQOL. RESULTS: Greater financial and employment stress were associated with poorer functioning across multiple HRQOL domains, even after controlling for the effects of possible confounding sociodemographic and medical variables. Insurance stress was not associated with HRQOL. Some associations were moderated by situational factors including timing of the current financial crisis and portion of the transplant paid for by health insurance. CONCLUSIONS: Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation survivors can face serious economic challenges during recovery. Results suggest the value of viewing these challenges as chronic stressors capable of reducing survivors' mental and physical well-being. Identifying resources and skills that help survivors cope with these demands is an important goal for clinicians and researchers.