Seasonal dispersal tendencies of sylvan deer mice (peromyscus maniculatus) with montana rangelands

We examined seasonal dispersal habits of sylvan deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus) within two Montana rangeland types over a three - year period. The rangeland types included a grassland and shrub-steppe habitat. Within the state of Montana, both habitat types commonly contain peridomestic settings due to the widespread influence of the ranching industry. These peridomestic environments are where most reported human cases of Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome (HPS) originate. During the study, we trapped each site twice a month in two week intervals through all weather conditions and a temperature range from -36.7 to + 40.0 °C. We accumulated 85,200 trap nights of effort and captured 6,185 individual deer mice a total of 22,654 times. We documented a total of 980 dispersing individuals over three years. Our results demonstrated no significant seasonal differences in the number of dispersing individuals. However, we did find a positive correlation between number of dispersing individuals and number of individuals captured at both sites. We also found that adult males tended to disperse more often during the spring compared to other seasons.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science (MS)

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Montana

Year

2007

Author dc:creator

• Waltee, Dean James

• correlation
• deer mouse
• dispersal
• grass land
• hantavirus
• Montana
• peridomestic
• Peromyscus maniculatus
• shrub steppe
• Sin Nombre virus
• sylvan
• trap night

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/869

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarworks.umt.edu:etd-1888