Theses and Dissertations

Issuing Body

Mississippi State University

Advisor

Wang, Guiming

Committee Member

Burger. Wes L.

Committee Member

Palmer, William

Date of Degree

8-6-2011

Document Type

Graduate Thesis - Open Access

Major

Wildlife and Fisheries Science

Degree Name

Master of Science (M.S.)

College

College of Forest Resources

Department

Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Aquaculture

Abstract

The Northern Bobwhite (Colinus virginianus) is a popular game bird that inhabits pine grasslands throughout the Southeast. This study used experimental manipulation of food resources to investigate how resource availability influenced foraging behavior and space use of bobwhite in a southern pine-grassland forest system. Radio marked bobwhite were monitored to determine daily space use, movements, and daily and seasonal ranges. I observed no difference in daily (P = 0.06) or seasonal home range size (P = 0.55) between feeding treatments. However, dispersion in daily locations of radio-marked bobwhite differed among feed levels (P < 0.001). I assessed effects of food availability on diet and total body lipids of birds harvested from each treatment during February. Although bobwhite extensively utilized supplemental feed when available, energy value of pre-roosting crop contents did not differ among treatments (P = 0.41), but total body lipids differed between feed treatments and years (P < 0.001).

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11668/15260

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