Theses and Dissertations

Issuing Body

Mississippi State University

Advisor

Street, Garrett M.

Committee Member

Strickland, Bronson K.

Committee Member

Tegt, Jessica L.

Committee Member

VerCauteren, Kurt C.

Date of Degree

5-4-2018

Document Type

Graduate Thesis - Open Access

Major

Wildlife, Fisheries and Aquaculture

Degree Name

Master of Science

College

College of Forest Resources

Department

Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Aquaculture

Abstract

Spatiotemporal dynamics of resource availability can produce markedly different patterns of landscape utilization which necessitates studying habitat selection across biologically relevant extents. Feral pigs (Sus scrofa) are a prolifically expanding, generalist species and researchers have yet to understand fundamental drivers of space use in agricultural landscapes within the United States. To study multi-scale habitat selection patterns, I deployed 13 GPS collars on feral pigs within the Mississippi Alluvial Valley. I estimated resource selection using mixed-effects models to determine how feral pigs responded to changes in forage availability and incorporated those results with autocorrelated kernel density home range estimates. My results indicated season-specific habitat functional responses to changes in agricultural phenology and illustrated the interdependencies of landscape composition, hierarchical habitat selection, and habitat functional responses. These results indicate fundamental drivers of feral pig spatial distributions in an agricultural landscape which I used to predict habitat use to direct feral pig management.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11668/16844

Comments

third order selection||second order selection||mixed-effect model||agriculture||spatiotemporal dyanmics||Sus scrofa||habitat selection

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