Life Sciences Commons^™

Nest Success Of Dabbling Ducks In A Human-Modified Prairie: Effects Of Predation And Habitat Variables At Different Spatial Scales, Jaime E. Jimenez

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Nest success of dabbling ducks in the Prairie Pothole region of North America has been declining for the past 40 years in parallel with declines in duck populations. Low nest success seems to result from the combination of an extremely fragmented breeding ground in a human-dominated landscape with an abundant and expanding community of generalist nest predators. Studies that examined variables associated with nest vulnerability to predation have produced contradictory results, likely because of simplistic approaches, lack of spatio-temporal replication, use of artificial nests, and the effect of confounding variables. I attempted to clarify the equivocal findings of previous studies …