Habitat relationships and gene flow of Martes americana in northern Idaho
Forest fragmentation can have a dramatic effect on landscape connectivity and dispersal of animals, potentially reducing gene flow within and among populations. American marten populations (Martes americana) are sensitive to forest fragmentation and the spatial configuration of patches of remnant ma...
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| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
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Western CEDAR
2008
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| Online Access: | https://cedar.wwu.edu/wwuet/1 https://doi.org/10.25710/ghyc-3149 https://cedar.wwu.edu/context/wwuet/article/1000/viewcontent/4280.pdf |
| Summary: | Forest fragmentation can have a dramatic effect on landscape connectivity and dispersal of animals, potentially reducing gene flow within and among populations. American marten populations (Martes americana) are sensitive to forest fragmentation and the spatial configuration of patches of remnant mature forest has an important impact on habitat quality. This study represents an extensive multiple scale habitat relationships analysis conducted for American marten. In conjunction with Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG) and the U.S. Forest Service, genetic data on marten populations across the Idaho Panhandle National Forest was used to build habitat relationships models. Over 3 years of winter fieldwork during 2004, 2005, and 2006, I detected martens at 569 individual hair snare stations distributed across a 3,000 square kilometer study area covering the Selkirk, Purcell, and Cabinet Mountain ranges. I investigated habitat relationships of this population of Martes americana in the Idaho Panhandle National Forest (IPNF) at three spatial scales: Plot, Home Range, and Multiple-Scale. I used bivariate scaling to measure each environmental variable across a broad range of radii ranging from 90m-1080m around each sample station. I used an information-theoretic approach to rank 45 a priori candidate models that described hypothesized habitat relationships at each spatial scale. At the plot scale, marten presence was positively predicted by the Percentage of Landscape (PLand) comprised of large sawtimber, and negatively predicted by PLand of seedling/sapling timber type. At the home range scale, the probability of detecting a marten decreased with increasing amounts of fragmentation and highly contrasted edges between patches of large sawtimber and patches of seedling/sapling and non-stocked patches. In the multiple-scale analysis, I used a variable screening step to find variables that were universal and consistent throughout all models in order to build candidate models. PLand comprised of large homogeneous ... |
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