Sex-specific effects of reproductive season on bobcat space use, movement, and resource selection in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia.

Across taxa, sex-specific demands vary temporally in accordance with reproductive investments. In solitary carnivores, females must provision and protect young independently while meeting increased energetic demands. Males seek to monopolize access to females by maintaining large territories and defending them from other males.

Mark-recapture and mark-resight methods for estimating abundance with remote cameras: a carnivore case study.

Abundance estimation of carnivore populations is difficult and has prompted the use of non-invasive detection methods, such as remotely-triggered cameras, to collect data. To analyze photo data, studies focusing on carnivores with unique pelage patterns have utilized a mark-recapture framework and studies of carnivores without unique pelage patterns have used a mark-resight framework. We compared mark-resight and mark-recapture estimation methods to estimate bobcat (Lynx rufus) population sizes, which motivated the development of a new "hybrid" mark-resight model as an alternative to traditional methods.

Integrated modeling of bilateral photo-identification data in mark-recapture analyses.

When natural marks provide sufficient resolution to identify individual animals, noninvasive sampling using cameras has a number of distinct advantages relative to "traditional" mark-recapture methods. However, analyses from photo-identification records often pose additional challenges. For example, it is often unclear how to link left- and right-side photos to the same individual, and previous studies have primarily used data from just one side for statistical inference.

Gene flow and pathogen transmission among bobcats (Lynx rufus) in a fragmented urban landscape.

Urbanization can result in the fragmentation of once contiguous natural landscapes into a patchy habitat interspersed within a growing urban matrix. Animals living in fragmented landscapes often have reduced movement among habitat patches because of avoidance of intervening human development, which potentially leads to both reduced gene flow and pathogen transmission between patches. Mammalian carnivores with large home ranges, such as bobcats (Lynx rufus), may be particularly sensitive to habitat fragmentation.