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Full-Text Articles in Animal Sciences
Understanding The Tradeoff Between Safety And Food Quality In A Mammalian Herbivore Specialist, The Pygmy Rabbit, Jamie Lyn Utz
Understanding The Tradeoff Between Safety And Food Quality In A Mammalian Herbivore Specialist, The Pygmy Rabbit, Jamie Lyn Utz
Boise State University Theses and Dissertations
Conserving a sensitive animal species requires understanding the simultaneous tradeoffs between food and shelter within a landscape. Most management approaches only consider single factors like percent cover at landscape spatial scales. Quantifying the synergy between cover and food quality at a scale relevant to a foraging animal could better reveal the forces that shape habitat use. To better understand habitat use components, I investigated tradeoffs between predation risk and diet quality in a sagebrush endemic, the pygmy rabbit (Brachylagus idahoensis). This species is a rare example of a specialist herbivore that relies almost entirely on sagebrush for cover …
Raptors Present But Unobserved: Detectability At A Western Migration Watch-Site And Its Effect On Trend Analysis, Eric G. Nolte
Raptors Present But Unobserved: Detectability At A Western Migration Watch-Site And Its Effect On Trend Analysis, Eric G. Nolte
Boise State University Theses and Dissertations
Annual counts of migrating raptors (Accipitriformes, Falconiformes) are used as indices of population size. Variation in the proportion of the raptor population counted may decrease precision of trend estimates, thereby reducing power of inference. The proportion counted is the product of sample coverage and probability of detection. It is possible to improve the power of trend analysis by the adoption of techniques, such as double-observer or distance sampling, which estimate the probability of detection. I used a dependent double-observer method to estimate detectability at the annual fall raptor migration count at Lucky Peak, Idaho, in 2009 and 2010. …