Zoology Commons^™

Finding Fishers: Determining The Distribution Of A Rare Forest Mesocarnivore In The Northern Rocky Mountains, Jessica M. Krohner

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The Northern Rocky Mountain fisher population (Pekania pennanti), is classified as a Species of Greatest Conservation Need and is of special concern to state, federal, and tribal entities. In this thesis, we present methods to effectively survey fishers across the northern Rockies of Idaho and Montana, and provide estimates of fisher distribution at a population range-wide scale through occupancy analyses. We also assess factors that influence fisher occurrence through covariate analyses and identify core fisher habitat in the northern Rockies through spatial occupancy modeling. By sampling broadly across the landscape, we provide baseline distributional data for comparison against …

Protocol For Surveying Bat Use Of Lava Tube Caves During Winter In Craters Of The Moon National Monument And Preserve, Standard Operating Procedures, Thomas J. Rodhouse, Kathleen Slocum, Todd Stefanic, Shawn Thomas, Meghan Lonneker

United States National Park Service: Publications

Background

The Upper Columbia Basin Network I&M (Inventory and Monitoring) program and Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve are collaborating to monitor winter bat use in Arco Tunnel, which is a safely accessed cave in the northern portion of the monument that consistently has been found with the largest number of bats (~30/year) among the set of caves recently inventoried. The standard operating procedures documented here and the methods described in the associated protocol narrative will also be used to periodically inventory other caves within the monument and surrounding preserve as park resources and safety (winter environmental and …

Predicting Nesting Habitat Of Northern Goshawks In Mixed Aspen-Lodgepole Pine Forests In A High-Elevation Shrub-Steppe Dominated Landscape., Robert A. Miller, Jay D. Carlisle, Marc J. Bechard, Dena Santini

Robert Miller

We developed a habitat suitability model for predicting nest locations of breeding Northern Goshawks (Accipiter gentilis) in the high-elevation mixed forest and shrub-steppe habitat of south-central Idaho, USA. We used elevation, slope, aspect, ruggedness, distance-to-water, canopy cover, and individual bands of Landsat imagery as predictors for known nest locations with logistic regression. We found goshawks prefer to nest in gently-sloping, east-facing, non-rugged areas of dense aspen and lodgepole pine forests with low reflectance in green (0.53 - 0.61 μm) wavelengths during the breeding season. We used the model results to classify our 43,169 hectare study area into nesting suitability categories: …

Call Imitation And Call Modification In Red Crossbills, Patrick C. Keenan, Craig Benkman

Craig Benkman

Open-ended learning of flight calls has been found consistently in the subfamily Carduelinae. Understanding call learning is especially important in Red Crossbills (Loxia curvirostra complex) because calls appear to play an instrumental role in assortative mating, perhaps by acting as a marker trait that signals ecological adaptation for foraging on a particular species of conifer. We analyzed flight call recordings from a banded population of the South Hills (call type 9) crossbill to examine whether young birds imitate the calls of their parents and whether, as adults, individuals modify their calls to match those of their mates. The calls of …