Project Director

Hayes, Loren

Department Examiner

Gaudin, Timothy; Klug, Hope

Department

Dept. of Biological and Environmental Sciences

Publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Place of Publication

Chattanooga (Tenn.)

Abstract

Predation has significant effects on animal behavior and space use across species. In small mammals, the home range areas are shown to be influenced by predation risk. This project incorporates trapping data to analyze how predation risk influences the space use of Octodon degus, a social rodent endemic to Chile. We compared range size of degus living in four predator exclusion enclosures versus four control, non-predator exclusion enclosures in Parque Nacional Bosque de Fray Jorge, Chile through grid trapping methods. For each enclosure (NP and P) 95% MCP, 95% Kernal, 95% Distance Interval, and average captures was measured. There were significantly more captures in NP enclosures than in P enclosures. ANOVA and nested ANOVA tests did not yield any significant difference in MCP, kernel, and distance interval between successive captures. F-tests indicated that variance in MCP and total captures—but not distance interval and kernel, was greater in P than NP enclosures. This experiment provides a better understanding of the effects of predation and contributes to over 25 years of research community ecology of social rodents.

Acknowledgments

I would like to sincerely thank Dr. Loren Hayes for his continuous support of my Departmental Honors Thesis, related research, travel, and study. I would also like to thank the rest of my committee, Dr. Timothy Gaudin, Dr. Hope Klug, and Dr. Gregory O'Dea for their counsel. I gratefully acknowledge the funding I received from the Provost Student Research Award Grant, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. I truly appreciate the graduate student lab mates Madeline Strom, Megan Taig-Johnson, and Kathleen Carroll for the fellowship and guidance during this venture.

Degree

B. S.; An honors thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Bachelor of Science.

Date

12-2015

Subject

Predation (Biology); Degus

Keyword

Predation; Mammal; Octodon degus; Predation risk; Manipulation study

Discipline

Environmental Sciences

Document Type

Theses

Extent

46 leaves

DCMI Type

Text

Language

English

Rights

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Date Available

12-4-2015

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