Rural System's

Modern Wild Faunal Resource System Management

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A Summary of Faunal Space and Related Concepts

See Faunal Space Elements

1. Faunal space includes all conventional habitat factors but also food, cover, change over time, and abiotic factors along with animals themselves (the caribou within the caribou herd; the herd is habitat or faunal space; animals in a winter den and functional as space; birds in a flock provide perceptual space).
2. GIS is a popular abbreviation for geographic information system(s).
3. Home range is a function of animal weight/size and efficiency of collecting needed energy.
4. The wildlifer moves past overlaying maps to modeling within the pixel (or map cell or raster).
5. Water is critical -- with multiple sources and conservation - drink, eat, cellular, behavioral (restrict panting), conservative (e.g., dry feces).
6. Phenology is the study of biological sequences and timing of phenomena e.g., bud burst, leaf fall, gobbling.
7. Designing habitats is difficult and requires cost-effective use of knowledge to achieve stable faunal space needs for each life group.
8. Carrying capacity is a habitat (faunal space) phenomenon expressed in animal units.

9. Early succession in the Virginia Piedmont is suitable for only a few game species (quail and cottontails). Erosion areas (the red clay shown here) have little productivity and may good only for dusting. These bare areas are typically conspicuously revegetated starting after 2-3 years. Virginia pines shown here are part of the early stage. Blackberry, dew berry,honeysuckle, and Andropogon are early invaders. Hardwood trees are in the background.

   Carrying capacity has many definitions. Consider the long one suggested in Giles (1978) and all factors.
10. Use (at least) maximum number of animals an area will support on a sustained basis without destruction of habitat or the maximum residual population at which productivity declines to zero.
11. Plant vigor is lost in many plants at 60% use.
12. Land has area but also volume. Analyze area x average ht. of vegetation as a first approximation for comparisons of richness or density.
13. There are many measures of interspersion, an expression of pattern.
14. Juxtaposition implies both contiguity and an estimate of the quality of a condition for a life group.
15. Spatial diversity can be expressed as patchiness, or variance in distance between units, or Simpson index of areas or distances between centers of polygons.
16. Landscape ecology - perceived effects of patchiness and pattern on population occurrence or abundance.
17. Points and lines in the environment have zones of influence.
18. There are many ways to estimate the mean width of such zones (tracks, observations, radio telemetry, traps)
19. There are many types of cover.
20. Landscape ecology for the wildlifer is related best by contiguity, nearness, zones of influence, and edge length.
21. Edge length needs to be replaced by measures of the edge tunnel or volume.
22. Edge effect: Carrying capacity in species of high type requirements and low radius varies directly with the interspersion of the types, which is proportional to the sum of the type peripheries. Such game is edge effect. Leopold 1933:134.
23. A management guild (in contract to a faunal guild) is an enterprise working to produce profits from sophisticated single-species management.
24. Ecosystem management emerges from new perspectives and needs to be replaced by total system management including the 5-E themes or paradigms.
25. Pest management: replace IPM with integrated vertebrate pest damage management. Manage damage, not injury or the population.
26. Buffer species are alternative prey that take foraging pressure of predators off of game animals or other animals of interest.
27. Fence may be a management device to reduce damage. There are 13 F ways to manipulate succession
28. A production function is a succession curve, a picture of the likely transition of a single resource of interest over time.
29. In nature, conditions change in fairly predictable ways due to sequential developments.
30. The pathway can be change. Managers can set back or advance succession curves.
31. The succession curve is the most important process concept of this course.
32. Interspersion, etc. are modifiers of succession curve quality for animals.
33. By adding succession curves for small areas over a large area, total food or other faunal space characteristics over time can be achieved.
34. Once a level that is needed (of some characteristic of an area, e.g., food), then the level obtained can be subtracted from that desired. The difference (squared) is a good measure of system performance.
35. With an objective, curves may be started of the proper time and area.
36. The height of the curve is a function of the area.
37. The shape of the curve (slight alterations) can be adjusted for quality -- related to juxtaposition.

Examples of life groups:

• turkey poult vs. adult
• buck vs. doe deer
• male cardinals vs others
• singing quail vs others
• ruffed grouse sex/age classes, each having different behavior
• insect and salamander instars

There are often greater differences between life groups within a species than between them and similar genera.

Faunal space is also feeding or foraging space sometimes called trophic levels (but are plants a trophic level? ... perhaps a food level?) and clearly animals change roles by season (presumably based on energy costs of getting, processing, and storing essential energy) , based on needs, and based on opportunity. Animals shift role categories based on toxins, threat aversions, parasite avoidance and aversion, and predation risk. There are

• herbivores (including granivores and fructivores)
• predators
• omnivores
• scavengers
• detritivores (mixed small plant and animal detritus

Careful, this may be a difficult concept:

• it starts with conventional species or sub-species groups as the managerial entity...but asks the questions about whether there are managerial differences (feeding, breeding, energy needs, etc.) not just taxonomic differences that need to be addressed to achieve the desired populations cost effectively
• it may be in opposition to "assemblages" or ecological guilds
• it leads to increased refinement (often with computer assistance) rather than encouraging "grouping" of animals
• it suggests emphasis can be placed on managerial options available for each such group, for example the faunal system manager is not just "managing turkeys" but, whether stated for the public or not, he or she is managing turkey poults.

Most actions effect many species or life groups:

Projects	Effects of Project on Life Groups			Gross Sum of Effects on Life Groups
	1	2	3
1	1	0	1	2
2	0	0	1	1
3	1	0	1	2

The magnitude of effect of Project #3 is 2on Life Group #3 but also on Group #1.

Using relative numbers can allow a summation across the row to pick the best action. Here 1 and 3 are tied for "best" since both have a score of 2. The method is most appropriate for rough 50-life-group work; with many groups, ties will be rare.

Duplication of the 30+ list above.

References of "Habitat"

Anderson. S. H. and H. H. Shugart. Jr. 1974. Habitat selection of breeding birds in an east Tennessee forest. Ecology 55:828-837.

Dasmann. R. F. Wildlife biology. John Wiley and Sons. New York. (Ch. 4).

Dueser. R. D. and H. H. Shugart. 1978. Microhabitats in a forest-floor small mammal community. Ecology 59:89-98.

Giles. R. H.. Jr. 1978. Wildlife management. W. H. Freeman. New York. (Ch. 4)

Moen. A. N. 1973. Wildlife ecology. W. B. Freeman, New York. (Ch. 2)**

Smith. R. L. 1977. Ecology and field biology. Harper and Row, New York.(p. 24; Ch. 15 and 16)*

Whitmore, R. C. 1977. Habitat partitioning in a community of passerine birds. Wilson Bull. 89:253-265.

Whittaker, R. H., S. A. Levin and R. B. Root. 1973. Habitat, niche, and ecotope. Amer. Nat. 147:321-338.

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Last revision January 10, 2004.