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Life Sciences Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

University of Nebraska - Lincoln

2008

Grazing

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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

Spatiotemporal Dynamics Of Black-Tailed Prairie Dog Colonies Affected By Plague, David J. Augustine, Marc R. Matchett, Theodore P. Toombs, Jack F. Cully, Tommy L. Johnson, J. G. Sidle Mar 2008

Spatiotemporal Dynamics Of Black-Tailed Prairie Dog Colonies Affected By Plague, David J. Augustine, Marc R. Matchett, Theodore P. Toombs, Jack F. Cully, Tommy L. Johnson, J. G. Sidle

United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

Black-tailed prairie dogs (Cynomys ludovicianus) are a key component of the disturbance regime in semi-arid grasslands of central North America. Many studies have compared community and ecosystem characteristics on prairie dog colonies to grasslands without prairie dogs, but little is known about landscape-scale patterns of disturbance that prairie dog colony complexes may impose on grasslands over long time periods. We examined spatiotemporal dynamics in two prairie dog colony complexes in southeastern Colorado (Comanche) and northcentral Montana (Phillips County) that have been strongly influenced by plague, and compared them to a complex unaffected by plague in northwestern Nebraska (Oglala). …