Habitat Use and Diet Selection of Sympatric Mule Deer and Elk in South-central Wyoming PDF Download
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Author: Brian L. DeBolt
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Elk
Languages : en
Pages : 176
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Author: Brian L. DeBolt
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Elk
Languages : en
Pages : 176
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Book Description
Author: Marc A. Porter
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Competition (Biology)
Languages : en
Pages : 146
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Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Dissertations, Academic
Languages : en
Pages : 356
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Book Description
"Education, arts and social sciences, natural and technical sciences in the United States and Canada".
Author: Gregory W. McDaniel
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Deer populations
Languages : en
Pages : 128
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Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 620
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Book Description
Author: Hall Sawyer
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781124300870
Category : Energy development
Languages : en
Pages : 108
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Book Description
Increased levels of energy development across the intermountain West have created a variety of wildlife and habitat management concerns. Because many of the energy resources in the region occur in shrub-dominated basins (e.g., Powder River, Piceance, Great Divide, and Green River basins), management concerns have focused on native shrub communities and associated species, including mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus). Two of the more pressing concerns are how mule deer respond when critical habitats (e.g., winter range) are impacted by development and how their migration routes can be identified and prioritized for conservation. To address the first, I examined how three types of natural gas well pads with varying levels of vehicle traffic influenced the winter habitat selection patterns of mule deer in western Wyoming. My results showed that mule deer avoided all types of well pads and selected areas further from well pads that received high levels of traffic. Accordingly, impacts to mule deer could likely be reduced through technology and planning that minimizes the number of well pads and amount of human activity associated with them. To address the migration concerns, I developed a quantitative framework that uses global positioning system (GPS) data and the Brownian bridge movement model (BBMM) to: (1) provide a probabilistic estimate of the migration routes of a sampled population, (2) distinguish between route segments that function as stopover sites versus those used primarily as movement corridors, and (3) prioritize routes for conservation based upon the proportion of the sampled population that uses them. Mule deer migration routes were characterized by a series of stopover sites where deer spent most of their time, connected by movement corridors through which deer moved quickly. These findings suggest management strategies that differentiate between stopover sites and movement corridors may be warranted. Because some migration routes were used by more mule deer than others, proportional level of use may provide a reasonable metric by which routes can be prioritized for conservation. Although stopovers appeared to be a prominent feature of mule deer migration routes, the explicit study of stopovers (i.e., stopover ecology) has been limited to avian species. To assess whether stopover ecology was relevant to mule deer, I again used fine-scale GPS data and BBMMs to quantify a suite of stopover characteristics and examine the ecological role of stopovers in the seasonal migrations of mule deer. Mule deer utilized a series of stopover sites in both spring and fall migrations, across a range of migration distances (18-144 km). Overall, mule deer used 1.9 and 1.5 stopovers for every 10 km increase in migration distance during spring and fall migrations, respectively. Stopovers had higher quality forage compared to movement corridors, and forage quality increased with elevation, presumably because of delayed phenology along the altitudinal migration route. Stopovers likely play a key role in the migration strategy of mule deer by allowing them to migrate in concert with vegetative phenology and optimize their foraging during migration. My results suggest stopovers were a critical component in the altitudinal migrations of mule deer and that conservation of stopover sites may improve efforts aimed at sustaining migratory mule deer populations.
Author: Moira Kolada
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Thesis
Languages : en
Pages : 176
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In semi-arid environments, such as the Great Basin, low productivity and frequent drought conditions increase the complexity of understanding the potential for competition, habitat selection, and dietary separation between native ungulates and cattle. I studied resource partitioning and spatial patterns of habitat use by female mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) and female elk (Cervus elaphus) in eastern Nevada during winter, spring, and summer. I also examined dietary composition and overlap of mule deer, elk, and cattle. To assess resource partitioning and spatial distributions I used ecological niche factor analysis (ENFA) to analyze the areas used by radio-collared mule deer and elk and create habitat suitability maps for both species. I found that both species were using habitats close to dirt roads and that areas with high pinyon-juniper cover were avoided during all seasons. Nonetheless, there was selection for low-density pinyon-juniper areas and areas in proximity to pinyon-juniper. Mule deer selected for specific elevational ranges (2300m to 2500m) and areas close to springs during the summer. Elk selected for higher elevations during spring and summer. Slope and proximity to springs were also important during summer. I found that habitat use was more restricted during summer than for the other seasons for both species, but especially mule deer. My results suggest that in these semi-arid watersheds, mule deer and elk may be more restricted by availability of water and high quality forage during summer. To assess dietary composition and overlap between mule deer, elk, and cattle, diet utilization was quantified from microhistological analysis of rumen and fecal samples. I observed that there was not substantial dietary overlap among elk and mule deer from October to December, but that dietary overlap was greatest in summer. Elk and mule deer showed greater dietary overlap than elk and cattle. I observed a slight dietary separation among male and female elk, with female elk diets having a greater graminoid component than male elk. Elk and cattle exhibited greater dietary separation in my study area that included a crested wheatgrass seeding, suggesting either that elk avoided areas of high cattle concentration (i.e. crested wheatgrass seedings), or that cattle preferred the seeded grasses and utilized less of other forage species favored by elk.
Author: Mark Christopher Wallace
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Cattle
Languages : en
Pages : 104
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Author: Nicholas F. Trulove
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781303150265
Category : Mule deer
Languages : en
Pages : 164
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Book Description
For mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus ) in the Intermountain West, alterations to habitat are outpacing strategies to mitigate human disturbance on critical seasonal ranges and migration routes. Conserving mule deer habitat requires cooperation between a diverse group of stakeholders, state wildlife agencies, and federal land management agencies. The first chapter of this thesis explores the current and historical relationship between state wildlife agencies, citizen stakeholders, and federal agencies in order to highlight opportunities to improve cooperative habitat conservation in the United States. Conservation is a result of social, political, and economic action, but relies upon science to inform policy. The second chapter explores the seasonal habitat use of mule deer in southwestern Wyoming. In response to low fawn recruitment, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department deployed 15 GPS collars on adult female mule deer in an effort to enhance knowledge of mule deer population dynamics, migrations, and habitat use. The study captured two winter climate regimes, with greater winter severity during the 2010-11 winter compared to the winter of 2011-12. Deer migrated an average of 23.9 km (SE = 2.2) between seasonal ranges, and completed spring migrations nearly one month earlier following the milder winter of 2011-12 ( t 19 = 5.53, df = 19, P ? 0.001). Pooled, the average area of winter ranges (1057 ha, SE = 103, n = 26) was larger than summer ranges (423 ha, SE = 51 ha, n = 25) (t = -5.44, df = 49, P ≤ 0.001), with no increase or decrease in size of seasonal ranges detected between years (P = 0.243) according to a post-hoc Tukey HSD test. Between years, deer were observed to shift the geographic center of winter ranges (2.9 km, SE = 1.1, n = 12) to a larger degree than summer ranges (0.4 km, SE = 0.1, n = 12) (t = -2.20, df = 22, P = 0.040). Survival and pregnancy rates (86% and 96%, respectively) correlated closely with other mule deer studies, and neither factor appears to negatively impact population growth. Identifying seasonal ranges and migration routes, and quantifying seasonal habitat use, will assist Wyoming Game and Fish Department efforts to protect mule deer seasonal habitats and migration routes, and direct vegetation manipulations intended to improve the nutritional quality of habitats. On average, winter ranges included a later percentage of shrub-dominated habitat (83.8%, SE = 0.3, n = 26) than summer ranges (57.5%, SE = 2.0, n = 25) (t = -4.42, df = 49, P ? 0.001). Summer ranges averaged a greater proportion of agricultural lands (2.8%, SE = 1.1, n = 25) and aspen (Populus tremuloides ) habitats (9.0%, SE = 2.2, n = 25) than winter ranges (0.1%, SE = 0.1, n = 26 and 0.2%, SE = 0.0, n = 26, respectively) (t = 3.03, df = 49, P = 0.004 and t = 3.86, df = 49, P ? 0.001, respectively). Mule deer ranges are primarily located on Bureau of Land Management (73%, SE = 2.8, n = 51) and privately owned (17.3%, SE = 2.9, n = 51) lands, highlighting opportunities for cooperative partnerships for mule deer habitat conservation.
Author: Anna R. Staudenmaier
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Mule deer
Languages : en
Pages :
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Mule (Odocoileus hemionus) and white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) are similar species, distributed across North America in both areas of sympatry and allopatry. Potential differences in their fundamental and realized niches that might be responsible for their distribution patterns remain largely unknown. Therefore, to directly compare the fundamental nutritional niche of mule and white-tailed deer we conducted in vivo digestion and intake tolerance trials using 7 tractable mule and 6 white-tailed deer, raised under similar conditions in captivity, across 6 diets ranging in fiber, protein, and plant secondary metabolite (PSM) content. We found that compared to white-tailed deer, mule deer had higher fiber, energy, and dry matter digestibility, produced glucuronic acid (a byproduct of PSM detoxification) at a slower rate when consuming the monoterpene [alpha]-pinene, and required 50% less digestible protein intake and 20% less digestible energy intake to maintain body mass and nitrogen balance. These differences might provide an advantage to mule deer when sharing landscapes with white-tailed deer containing forages of lower nutritional quality (i.e., higher fiber and PSM content). To compare their realized habitat niches, we determined presence and absence of both species at 312 cameras traps during the summers of 2018-2019 across a range of elevations, habitats, and overstory thinning treatments in the Colville National Forest (CNF) in northeastern Washington. We compared their habitat use with single species occupancy models and found that topography was the strongest indicator of differing habitat use; mule deer were more likely to occupy steep slopes and higher elevations and white-tailed deer the opposite. Using conditional, two species occupancy modeling, we found that mule and white-tailed deer occurred independently of one another (i.e., no dominance) in the CNF in summer. The absence of spatial and temporal segregation between the two species was supported by ~ 90% overlap in daily activity patterns and similar elapsed time between subsequent intra- or interspecies detections at camera sites with both species detected. Our research suggests that mule and white-tailed deer likely minimize potential competitive interactions in part by evolving different abilities to cope with low quality forage and by segregating topographically, thus are largely syntopic.
