The effects of a prairie grass restoration on small mammal populations in the Pennsylvania State University Arboretum.
Open Access
- Author:
- Mcmahon, Elyse Kathleen
- Area of Honors:
- Wildlife and Fisheries Science
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Justin Bohling, Thesis Supervisor
Margaret C Brittingham, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- small mammals
prairie grass
restoration
abundance
estimated population size
density
diversity
evenness
mark recaputre - Abstract:
- Prairie grassland conservation is an important management issue in the restoration of historical habitats in Pennsylvania. To determine how small mammals are being affected by an ongoing prairie grass restoration at the Pennsylvania State Arboretum I conducted a live trapping mark-recapture study throughout the months of June-August 2012. The current treatment area is a 2.02 hectare grassland that has a mix of prairie grasses and invasive species as compared with a nearby control site that was dominated by invasive shrubs and grass species. I had several hypotheses for this experiment all of which focused on how restoration efforts would affect small mammal composition and community structure. Most species expected in the treatment area included meadow voles (Microtus pennsylvanicus), deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus), white-footed mice (Peromyscus leucopus) and red-backed voles (Myodes gapperi). While there were a few significant differences in relative abundance and relative density on the species level, the community level did not show prominent differences in these measures. Estimated population size showed little difference between the treatment and the control sites, but only with one species, demonstrating little significance within the community. The treatment area had a lower diversity index but a higher evenness value as compared with the control area. Overall there was no significant difference in relative abundance estimated population size or relative density as this was the first year of the study since the original restoration efforts in 2001 and there were few changes between the treatment and control sites. This experiment will assist in continuing restoration efforts and be used in future research as baseline study for small mammal species composition in other prairie grass restoration sites in Pennsylvania.