Digital Commons Network^™

Coyote Foraging Ecology, Vigilance, And Behavioral Cascades In Response To Gray Wolf Reintroduction In Yellowstone National Park, T. Adam Switalski

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Vigilance behavior can aid in the detection of predators and may also play a role in observation of conspecifics, in food acquisition, and in the prevention of kleptoparasitism. However, in most occasions, vigilance is most important as an antipredator function. Generally, factors that increase the risk of predation also increase the amount of vigilance. We examined whether the reintroduction of the large predator, the wolf, in Yellowstone National Park (YNP) would influence coyote vigilance and foraging ecology. From December 1997 to July 2000, we collected 1743 h of coyote activity budgets. Coyote home ranges occurred within wolf territories (termed high-use …

Statmod: A Tool For Interfacing Arcview® Gis With Statistical Software To Facilitate Predictive Ecological Modeling, Christine M. Garrard

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

As geographical information systems and spatial data become more accessible, predictive spatial modeling in ecology is becoming more common. Unfortunately, not all ecologists possess the necessary skills to successfully combine statistical models and geographical information systems. In response to this problem, I wrote an extension for ArcView^® GIS called StatMod. This extension interfaces ArcView GIS with SAS^® and S-PLUS^® statistical software and walks the user through creating and mapping logistic regression and classification and regression tree models.

StatMod was then used to run a series of analyses that would have been difficult without such a tool. A …