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Observed links between parasites, such as ticks, and climate change have aroused concern for human health, wildlife population dynamics, and broader ecosystem effects. The one-host life history of the winter tick (Dermacentor albipictus) links each annual cohort to environmental conditions during three specific time periods when they are predictably vulnerable: spring detachment from hosts, summer larval stage, and fall questing for hosts. We used mixed-effects generalized linear models to investigate the drivers of tick loads carried by moose (Alces alces) relative to these time periods and across 750 moose, 10 years, and 16 study areas in the western United States. We tested for the effects of biotic factors (moose...
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The South Rock Spring mule deer herd lives year-round in the Greater Little Mountain Ecosystem in southwestern Wyoming, an arid landscape where desert badlands give way to aspen and mountain shrub communities at higher elevations. Approximately 4,000 mule deer occupy this landscape, which is one of the least developed in Wyoming. Likely owing to its aridity and lack of strong elevational gradients and high mountains, mule deer migrations in this herd are less pronounced and less structured than elsewhere in Wyoming. Instead of all animals congregating in a common winter range and following a common narrow corridor to their summer range, mule deer in this herd migrate in a very diverse fashion. Some animals winter...
Abstract (from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ele.12772/full): The Green Wave Hypothesis posits that herbivore migration manifests in response to waves of spring green-up (i.e. green-wave surfing). Nonetheless, empirical support for the Green Wave Hypothesis is mixed, and a framework for understanding variation in surfing is lacking. In a population of migratory mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus), 31% surfed plant phenology in spring as well as a theoretically perfect surfer, and 98% surfed better than random. Green-wave surfing varied among individuals and was unrelated to age or energetic state. Instead, the greenscape, which we define as the order, rate and duration of green-up along migratory routes,...
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This small herd of elk is steadily establishing themselves in the Greater Little Mountain Ecosystem in southwestern Wyoming. Elk in this system occupy some of the most arid seasonal ranges in the state, which contrast with the more forested habitat that elk typically occupy in Wyoming. The herd is small but growing, with 920 animals counted during trend surveys in 2020. The habitat is a mix of broad valleys dominated by sagebrush habitat, with aspen, mountain shrubs, and pinyon juniper at higher elevations. Elk in this system are not strongly migratory, although there is a clear pattern to their seasonal movements, with winter ranges in the lower elevation habitat just east of Flaming Gorge Reservoir, and summer...
The green wave hypothesis (GWH) states that migrating animals should track or ‘surf’ high-quality forage at the leading edge of spring green-up. To index such high-quality forage, recent work proposed the instantaneous rate of green-up (IRG), i.e. rate of change in the normalized difference vegetation index over time. Despite this important advancement, no study has tested the assumption that herbivores select habitat patches at peak IRG. We evaluated this assumption using step selection functions parametrized with movement data during the green-up period from two populations each of bighorn sheep, mule deer, elk, moose and bison, totalling 463 individuals monitored 1–3 years from 2004 to 2014. Accounting for variables...
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