SNAPSHOT USA is a multicontributor, long-term camera trap survey designed to survey mammals across the United States. Participants are recruited through community networks and directly through a website application (https://www.snapshot-usa.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVarious landscape and environmental factors influence animal movement and habitat selection. Lunar illumination affects nocturnal visual perception of many species and, consequently, may influence animal activity and habitat selection. However, the effects of varying moon stage may differ across taxa.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHabitat selection by animals is a complex, dynamic process that can vary across spatial and temporal scales. Understanding habitat selection is a vital component of managing endangered species. Ocelots (Leopardus pardalis), a medium-sized endangered felid, overlap in their northern range with bobcats (Lynx rufus) and coyotes (Canis latrans), with all three species sharing similar space and resource use.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFManaging wildlife populations in the face of global change requires regular data on the abundance and distribution of wild animals, but acquiring these over appropriate spatial scales in a sustainable way has proven challenging. Here we present the data from Snapshot USA 2020, a second annual national mammal survey of the USA. This project involved 152 scientists setting camera traps in a standardized protocol at 1485 locations across 103 arrays in 43 states for a total of 52,710 trap-nights of survey effort.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPatterns in, and the underlying dynamics of, species co-occurrence is of interest in many ecological applications. Unaccounted for, imperfect detection of the species can lead to misleading inferences about the nature and magnitude of any interaction. A range of different parameterizations have been published that could be used with the same fundamental modeling framework that accounts for imperfect detection, although each parameterization has different advantages and disadvantages.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInterspecific competition among carnivores has been linked to differences in behavior, morphology, and resource use. Insights into these interactions can enhance understanding of local ecological processes that can have impacts on the recovery of endangered species, such as the ocelot (). Ocelots, bobcats (), and coyotes () share a small geographic range overlap from South Texas to south-central Mexico but relationships among the three are poorly understood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSympatric ocelots (Leopardus pardalis) and bobcats (Lynx rufus) in South Texas show substantial overlap in body size, food habits, and habitat use. Consequently, we explore whether temporal niche partitioning may explain ocelot and bobcat coexistence. We investigated the influence of sun angle, lunar illumination, and maximum diurnal temperature on temporal movement rates of sympatric ocelots (n = 8) and bobcats (n = 6) using a combination of high-frequency GPS locations and bi-axial accelerometer data.
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