Species Status Assessment Version 1.0
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Florida Golden Aster (Chrysopsis floridana) Species Status Assessment Version 1.0 Photo by Alafia River State Park July 2018 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Region 4 Atlanta, GA Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iv EXECUTIVE SUMMARY iv 1 INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 Species Federal Status 3 2 SPECIES BIOLOGY 3 2.1 Species Description and Taxonomy 3 2.2 Life History and Demography 4 2.3 Habitat 6 2.4 Abundance and Distribution 8 2.4.1 Historical 8 2.4.2 Current 8 2.5 Genetics 10 3 SPECIES NEEDS FOR VIABILITY 11 3.1 Individual Level 11 3.2 Population Level 12 3.3 Species Level 12 4 INFLUENCES ON VIABILITY 13 4.1 Habitat Availability 14 4.2 Habitat Management 14 4.3 Introductions 15 4.4 Climate Change 16 5 CURRENT CONDITION 18 5.1 Delineating Populations 18 5.2 Current Resilience 18 5.2.1 Population Size 19 5.2.2 Habitat Protection 21 5.2.3 Habitat Area Available 22 5.2.3.1 Measuring Available Habitat 23 5.2.4 Classifying Resilience 27 5.3 Current Redundancy and Representation 32 ii 6 FUTURE CONDITION 34 6.1 Future Considerations 34 6.1.1 Habitat Quantity 35 6.1.2 Habitat Quality 35 6.1.2.1 Development Risk Assessments 38 6.2 Future Scenarios 44 6.2.1 Status Quo 44 6.2.2 Pessimistic 45 6.2.3 Targeted Conservation 45 6.2.4 Likelihood of Scenarios 49 6.3 Future Resilience 49 6.4 Future Redundancy and Representation 53 LITERATURE CITED 54 APPENDIX 57 iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This document was prepared by Stephanie DeMay (Texas A&M Natural Resources Institute), Todd Mecklenborg (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service [Service]), Byron Hamilton (Service), and Michael Marshall (Service). External species expertise, guidance, and document reviews were provided by technical team members Eric Menges (Archbold Biological Station), Michael Jenkins (Florida Forest Service), Ann Johnson (Florida Natural Areas Inventory), and Cheryl Peterson (Bok Tower Gardens). Peer review was provided by Sheryl Bowman (Hillsborough County) and Jennifer Possley (Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden). EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Florida golden aster (Chrysopsis floridana) is a short-lived perennial endemic to scrub habitat and ecotones between scrub and flatwoods east and southeast of the Tampa Bay area of central Florida. The historical distribution of this plant is not well understood because of the speed at which its habitat was converted to residential, commercial, and agricultural uses after human settlement. It is currently known from 30 populations within 5 counties in Florida, and has been listed as federally endangered since 1986 (51 FR 17974). Of these, 25 populations occur entirely or mostly on lands protected for conservation, and 9 of these populations were introduced (3 extant populations introduced in the 1980s, 6 extant populations introduced since 2008). Over half of the known number of individuals occur in these introduced populations, illustrating the importance of captive propagation and introductions to the recovery of the species. Open habitat is important to the species, which was maintained historically by periodic natural burns and other natural processes (e.g., animal trails, trees blown over in storms). Presently, open habitat must be maintained by prescribed burning or mechanical treatment. Many details about C. floridana’s habitat requirements (at every scale, landscape to microhabitat) and demography are not yet known, although there is a range-wide study in progress (partnership between Archbold Biological Station, Bok Tower Gardens, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) to gain a better understanding of these aspects of C. floridana biology. For the following Species Status Assessment (SSA), we made many assumptions about C. floridana needs and responses to stressors based on currently available knowledge and input from species experts, but further study is needed to test whether these assumptions hold. We are clear and explicit in the SSA about where these assumptions were made and why. We assessed current resilience of populations based on 3 factors: population size, habitat protection, and habitat area available. Resilience was tied primarily to population size, as large populations are better able to withstand demographic, environmental, and anthropogenic stochastic events. These resilience classes were as follows: < 100 plants = low resilience, 100- 500 plants = moderate resilience, 501-1000 plants = high resilience, and > 1000 plants = very high resilience. Habitat protection was a proxy for habitat management, under the assumption that populations on protected conservation lands are more likely to receive adequate habitat management (openness maintained) than those on private lands. Finally, we used a basic habitat model constructed from the current state of knowledge about the species biology and needs to calculate the amount of available habitat for each population to occupy, spread into, or shift into as current habitat becomes less suitable. Populations that were not on protected lands and/or had iv a small amount of habitat available were assigned to a resilience class lower than their population size would otherwise warrant. Based on this resilience classification strategy, there are currently 7 very highly resilient populations, 11 highly resilient populations, 6 moderately resilient populations, and 6 populations with low resilience. The vast majority of highly and very highly resilient populations occur in the central portion of the species range in Hillsborough and Manatee Counties (13 populations), with 3 such populations farther west in Pinellas County, and 2 such populations farther east in Hardee and Highlands Counties. Besides these 3 geographic clusters that are isolated from each other, there was no evidence of any representative units based on genetic or ecological differences, although future research could reveal otherwise. We assessed the future condition of C. floridana 20 years into the future under 3 scenarios: Status Quo, Pessimistic, and Targeted Conservation. These scenarios explored differences in habitat quantity (loss of habitat on private lands, acquisition of and/or introductions in unoccupied habitat) and habitat quality (interpreted as the ability to burn or maintain open habitat, influenced by the will and resources of managing entities and conditions that limit the ability and flexibility to burn such as urban development and roads). Under the Status Quo scenario, no new populations were established, and all were managed for stable populations (same resilience class as current condition) except for populations with a high risk of present and future development that will limit the ability to manage habitat; these fell one resilience rank. In the Pessimistic scenario, management effort on all populations decreased, presumably as an effect of wide-scale changes in management priorities and resources, resulting in a drop in resilience scores across the board, and all populations on non-protected lands were lost. Under the Targeted Conservation scenario, populations with high and very high resilience were managed to maintain their rank; in cases where populations had a high risk of development limiting the ability to manage, this involved an increase in management effort compared to what would be needed to maintain the same level of resilience for a population with a low risk of development impacts. Populations with currently moderate resilience on protected lands received management effort increases to either move them into the high resilience class (low risk from development) or maintain moderate resilience (high risk from development). Conservation resources were steered towards maintaining and growing these larger populations, and not as much towards rescuing populations that currently have low resilience. Additionally, 5 new sites were selected across the species range in which to introduce new populations, thus improving species redundancy. Of these 3 scenarios, the Status Quo scenario is the most likely to occur, although the Targeted Conservation scenario represents a likely future if both habitat-focused management (prescribed burning and mechanical or manual habitat management) by a variety of partners/managing entities and species-specific conservation (captive propagation and introductions) are prioritized and well-funded. It is important to note that as we applied habitat management impacts to populations and projected them into the future, populations only increased or decreased by one level of resilience over 20 years. Populations can grow or decline very rapidly, but we do not fully understand what drives these dynamics, and do not have reliable estimates of population growth rates to more quantitatively project population sizes into the future. Thus, we are conservative in the magnitude of our projections, but more confident in the direction of the change. Under all 3 scenarios, 4-7 populations currently with low resilience become extirpated. Under the Status Quo scenario, the number of highly and very highly resilient populations drops from 18 currently to v 12 in the future. Under the Pessimistic scenario, that number of highly and very highly resilient populations is 7. Under the Targeted Conservation scenario, the number of highly and very highly resilient populations increases to 27, with improved redundancy across the species range. In the Status Quo and Pessimistic scenarios, all populations are lost from Pinellas County, an area geographically separated from the two other general clusters of C. floridana populations. vi 1 INTRODUCTION The Species Status Assessment (SSA) framework (USFWS 2016) is intended to support an in- depth review of the species’ biology and threats, an evaluation of its biological status, and an assessment of the resources and conditions needed to maintain long-term viability. The intent is for the SSA to be easily updated as new information becomes available and to support all functions of the Endangered Species Program from Candidate Assessment to Listing to Consultations to Recovery. The Florida golden aster (Chrysopsis floridana) is endemic to xeric uplands east and southeast of the Tampa Bay area of central Florida. Chrysopsis floridana has been listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (Act), since 1986 (51 FR 17974).