Ecological relationships of terrestrial small mammals in western coniferous forests

Hallett, James G.; O’Connell, Margaret A.; Maguire, Chris C.

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511615757.006

Cited by 15 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 115 publications

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“…Accordingly, Douglas' squirrels are typically most abundant in mesic late-successional forests, where the resources they require, conifer seed crops, truffles, and large-diameter logs and stumps for cache sites are most abundant (Buchanan, Lundquist, & Aubry, 1990;Hallett, O'Connell, & Maguire, 2003;Smith, Anthony, Waters, Dodd, & Zabel, 2003). The other dominant sciurid prey taxa, golden-mantled ground squirrel and chipmunks, utilize most of the same food resources as Douglas's squirrels and whose abundances are typically highest where these food resources are most abundant (reviewed in Woodbridge, Hansen, & Dunk, 2012).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Diets of denning female Pacific martens vary with the developmental stage of their kits

Slauson

Zielinski

2019

Ecology and Evolution

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Food resources can be a limiting factor and natural and anthropogenic influences that alter the abundance of food resources can affect population performance and persistence. Reproduction in mammals is energetically costly; therefore, understanding how food resources influence reproduction is essential, especially for species of conservation concern. The objectives of this study were to characterize Pacific marten (Martes caurina) diets during the denning period and determine whether diets differed by sex or by phase of the denning period. We used 943 scats to reconstruct sex‐specific diets of martens in the Sierra Nevada mountains during the denning period to evaluate sex‐specific hypotheses of predation patterns. During the lactation phase, females preyed primarily on large‐sized prey (62.5% metabolizeable energy) 5.7‐times more than males. This likely optimized both energy gain and minimized time spent away from dependent young. During the weaning phase, females preyed primarily on medium‐ (90–200 g) and large‐sized prey (87.7% metabolizeable energy). During the predispersal phase, females exhibited a 4.7‐fold increase in use of small‐sized (<50 g) prey during the time kits are learning to hunt. Male overall diet and predation patterns appear to fit an optimal foraging strategy that is influenced primarily by prey profitability and abundance, with males preying primarily on medium‐sized prey, closest to meeting their lower energetic needs. In contrast, females appear to fit the predictions for a central place forager that is also influenced by prey profitability, but also the increased energetic and maternal demands of denning, leading them to use larger prey than males over the phases of the denning period when kits are growing. We hypothesize that switching to smaller prey is related to females assisting their kits in developing hunting skills and experience that may increase their chances of survival once they disperse.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Diets of denning female Pacific martens vary with the developmental stage of their kits

Slauson

Zielinski

2019

Ecology and Evolution

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“…Year effects were present in more species and often stronger than habitat effects, for both body mass and abundance (Table 2, 3). Variations in population size between years are typical of small mammals (Hallett et al, 2003;Monroe and Converse, 2006) and complicate identifying other factors affecting abundance, especially in short-term studies. Year effects can represent stochastic fluctuations, or deterministic effects, for example of climate (e.g., Bagne and Finch, 2010) or high resource abundance.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Specifically, we included two site-level habitat variables, volume of coarse woody debris (CWD) and percent canopy cover (PCC), both of which have been shown to influence habitat quality for many small mammal species (Hallett et al, 2003). We further included a year effect to account for fluctuations in small mammal populations across years, which are generally pronounced (Hallett et al, 2003). Thus, our model for group-level abundance (i.e., abundance for each site/year combination) takes the form:…”

Section: Effects Of Habitat On Abundancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The presence and abundance of small mammals in forested habitats is often correlated with habitat structure (Hallett et al, 2003;Johnston and Anthony, 2008;Lawlor, 2003;Naxara et al, 2009). Canopy cover, for example, influences the availability of resources on the forest floor, and small mammals are frequently positively associated with more open forests (e.g., Bellows et al, 2001;Greenberg et al, 2006), which are characterized by denser, more complex understory vegetation (Knapp et al, 2013).…”

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Investigating the effects of forest structure on the small mammal community in frequent-fire coniferous forests using capture-recapture models for stratified populations

et al. 2015

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“…Useful recent summaries of prey ecology are also provided by Aubry et al (2003), Hallett et al (2003) and Smith et al (2003).…”

Section: Prepared By Lisa Sztukowski and Steven Courtneymentioning

confidence: 99%

Forest Structure Within Barred Owl (Strix varia) Home Ranges in the Eastern Cascade Range, Washington

Singleton

2015

Journal of Raptor Research

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Ecological relationships of terrestrial small mammals in western coniferous forests

Cited by 15 publications

References 115 publications

Diets of denning female Pacific martens vary with the developmental stage of their kits

Diets of denning female Pacific martens vary with the developmental stage of their kits

Investigating the effects of forest structure on the small mammal community in frequent-fire coniferous forests using capture-recapture models for stratified populations

Forest Structure Within Barred Owl (Strix varia) Home Ranges in the Eastern Cascade Range, Washington

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