PARENT SESSION
Oral Session #26: Conservation Ecology: Terrestrial.
Presiding: P. Kleintjes
Tuesday, August 6. 8:00 AM to 11:30 AM. Greenlee Meeting Room, TCC.

Investigating small mammal response to relocation: The interplay between habitat selection and successful relocation.

Burns, Catherine^*,1, ¹ Yale University, New Haven, CT

ABSTRACT- Source-sink and ideal-despotic theory predict that high quality habitat will be occupied by superior, high-ranking individuals, whereas low quality habitat will contain subordinate, younger, or weaker individuals who do not have the ability to defend a territory. Density-dependent, territorial interactions are common in a variety of mammal species, including Peromyscus, and low quality habitat serves as a dispersal "sink" for behaviorally subordinate individuals. Little is known, however, about the importance of territorial interactions when individuals have been evicted from their native home ranges, especially when source habitats are disrupted. Peromyscus from two habitat types (oak-dominated and pine forest) were relocated to novel sites in northeast Connecticut and released along the transition zone between these two habitat types, both in the presence and absence of resident conspecifics. Short and long-term habitat selection and subsequent survival, reproduction and resource acquisition ability were assessed via live-trapping and PIT-tagging. Peromyscus selected oak over pine forest significantly more often, and survived longer in this habitat. Comparison of results between treatments with and without resident conspecifics provided evidence of dominance interactions influencing habitat selection. Resource acquisition data also indicated the influence of dominance structure in dictating habitat selection decisions. Understanding habitat selection and subsequent strategies will enable us to more precisely understand wildlife responses to habitat alteration, and to develop generalizeable predictions for the response of wildlife to removal of habitat in heterogeneous landscapes.

KEY WORDS: Peromyscus leucopus, habitat selection, territoriality, habitat loss