Our new manuscript on the changing demography of bobcats harvested in Wisconsin has been published in Royal Society Open Science. Changes in hunter demography and motivation appears to have led to the harvest of older and larger male bobcats. This essentially shows the shift of the harvest from a traditional harvest for fur to a harvest for trophy animals.
IBA 2018
I just returned from the 2018 International Bear Association Conference in Slovenia, where I gave a talk and a poster presentation. The talk was on the interactions between black bears and pumas, and the effects they have on the scavenger community. My poster was on the state-space model we created using age-at-harvest data to estimate black bear populations in Wisconsin.
State Space Model for Black Bear Populations
Our new paper describing our population model for black bears in Wisconsin has been published in Scientific Reports.
Population estimation is essential for the conservation and management of fish and wildlife, but accurate estimates are often difficult or expensive to obtain for cryptic species across large areas. We developed a two-stage state-space Bayesian model for black bears with age-at-harvest data, but little demographic data and no auxiliary data available. We created a statewide population estimate and tested the sensitivity of the model to bias in the prior distributions of parameters and initial population size.
The posterior abundance estimate from our model was similar to an independent capture-recapture estimate from tetracycline sampling and the population trend was similar to the catch-per-unit-effort for the state. Our model was also robust to bias in the prior distributions for all parameters, including initial population size, except for reporting rate. Our state-space model improves on previous models by using little demographic data, no auxiliary data, and not being sensitive to initial population size.
New Paper in Ecology
We published a manuscript in Ecology. The manuscript focuses on determining the traits and other values that determine who wins during competition between mesocarnivores. Encounter competition theory has never been tested with carnviores, and so I created foraging arenas and recorded fights between mesocarnivores over food. Surprisingly, bobcats and spotted skunks won more encounters than expected, while canines lost more often than expected. I think bobcats and skunks were able to win because of their unique weapons.
New Caracal Post for NatGeo
We have published a new post for National Geographic’s Cat Watch. The post focuses on a new milestone for the Urban Caracal Project in South Africa. If you haven’t heard of the Urban Caracal Project and Dr. Laurel Serieys, check out their website at https://www.urbancaracal.org. Their facebook page is also a fun follow (https://www.facebook.com/urbancaracal).