PARENT SESSION
Oral Session #34: Animal Ecology: Behavior and Sociobiology.
Presiding: S. Richards
Tuesday, August 6. 8:00 AM to 11:30 AM. Grand Ballroom East, Radisson.

Space use of white-nosed coatis in xeric forests: we're not in the tropics anymore.

Koprowski, John^*,1, ¹ Wildlife and Fisheries Science, Tucson, AZ

ABSTRACT- The ecology of marginal populations can provide insight into the factors that limit a species. White-nosed coatis (Nasua narica) are social carnivores typically found in tropical forests throughout much of their range but which extend northward in the Mexican-United States borderlands. My objective was to quantify the space use of white-nosed coatis in the xeric pine-oak forests of southeastern Arizona. Intensive trapping and radiotracking from 1986-2000 permitted the space use of solitary males and group living females to be assessed in Chiricahua National Monument, Cochise County, Arizona. Coatis ranged widely in xeric montane forests with home ranges of each sex nearly 10 times larger than ranges reported from mesic tropical forests. Despite the difference in the magnitude of space use, the social system did not change; female band structure was retained and males remained solitary. Female bands, however, did range more widely than males in most years, a dimorphism that is reversed from the sexual dimorphism in body size. During an El Nino event, the dimorphism in space use disappeared. Female space use patterns appear particularly responsive to available food in the arid lands at the northern terminus of the species range.

KEY WORDS: sociality, carnivore, Nasua narica, El Nino