Quizzes after Exam 1, Wildlife Techniques

You are tracking a bat using VHF and the signal just got louder. Which of the following could be true?

You moved closer to the bat

The bat moved closer to you

The bat shifted its body

List or describe 4 ways that GPS technology made animal tracking more advanced.

1)Real time tracking 

2) Show animals home range 

3) Showed us core areas of animals, where they mate or sleep

4) Show us migratory patterns of birds and where they go when they migrate, and when do they decide to rest 

What does the term ‘fix rate’ mean in animal tracking?

How often a gps or tracking device recorda spatial positions, so every 5 minutes or every 30 minutes, etc, things like that.

Can accelerometers record more data points that GPS in an hour?

True

On movebank, all of the data is publicly available for you to download. True or False?

False

Define a home range and a geographic range?

A home range is an area transversed by the individual in its normal activities of food gathering, mating, etc. A geographic range is broader and species specific on where the population can be found.

Minimum convex polygon (MCP) is the simplest way to estimate a home range. True or False

True

What is GPS cluster analysis typically most useful for?

Large carnivores

If the used points represent where the animal was, what do the available points in a resource selection analysis represent?

The available points represent where the animal could have gone in the study area.

Based on your reading of Fuzz, what does the conflict with bears in Colorado and the monkeys in India have in common?

Both animals are way to accustomed to human interactions and of the food left over from humans as well.

Based on Fuzz, what makes counting mountain lions hard?

Not many people are good at tracking them.

Their population density is low

Birds can generally disperse further than reptiles (disperse refers to juveniles leaving their family and looking for their own home range). True or False

True

Cornell makes an app to identify bird calls named?

Merlin

You are organizing a statewide point count survey for northern bobwhite quail. What habitat should you devote the most effort to?

Grasslands and Brushlands.

Why is there so much interest from TPWD in the upland/migratory birds we talked about (quail, turkeys and doves)?

Because we hunt these animals and when hunting we want to know their population estimation and how many there are. So that we know if we are over hunting or under hunting, or hunting just the right amount to repopulate the population.

Which of these have home ranges?

GPS clusters

Individual animals

A species

Population of animals

Individual animals

Reptiles and amphibians are grouped together as 'herps' because they are closely related. True or False

False, they were only grouped because they were considered creepy looking.

Please give an example of how a group's (like bird, reptile, or amphibian) biology influences how we as wildlife biologists study them.

Amphibians connection to water is something that can highly influence how biologists study them. So if you wanted to study frogs, and they spend most of their life in water, knowing that can connect the dots on things they want to study.

A rich Texas State donor doesn't like snakes and has demanded the University conduct a survey to see what species of snake live on campus (not including green spaces like Spring Lake or Freeman Ranch). They will give you up to 10K for this survey. What survey technique (or techniques) will you use? Please explain your reasoning.

We can use drift fences with funnel traps and put them all around campus where they could potentially be. A field biologists would be checking them every day multiple times a day and would give insight on what species of snakes live on campus.

Why was Alex's friend squirting water into alligator mouths across their range?

To study their diet and look for microplastics.

What are the goals of establishing a captive breeding program?

Maintain genetic diversity

Support a reintroduction program

What is the point of soft releases?

Soft releases are to see how the animals will do in something close to their natural environment while still watching over them. So wanting to see how they will do and not just throwing them back into their natural range/environment. 

The western yellow bat has been identified by TPWD as a species with a low population that they want to increase. The problem is TPWD doesn't know why the population is low in the first place. What are two potential reasons that yellow bat populations have dropped?

Two potential reasons yellow bat populations have dropped could be because of disease spreading. The second reason could be because of urbanization, maybe their cover and home range has become disturbed by human footprint. 

Why did snow geese populations increase so much?

They ate a lot of grain in fields along their migration routes.

Pasture mealybug has recently arrived in Texas. Name three things you would want to know about its ecology or biology in order to know whether it should be classified as invasive or not.

What is their natural predator and is it present in that area of Texas.

How fast can they reproduce and how many eggs do they release at once.

What is its native range and how did it end up here in Texas, was in introduced?

Agriculture abandonment in temperate regions tend to benefit (blank) and (blank) species.

Tend to benefit forest and generalist species.

The city of San Marcos wants to determine whether deer are overabundant anywhere in the city. What data or information should the city collect to make this determination?

The health of the population, get a population survey for them as well. Are the deer creating damage to the ecosystem or their habitat.

What has been consistently related to armadillo range expansion in the last 75 years?

Climate

It only makes sense to talk about habitat at the {. } level.?

Species level

Hays County likes to claim that west of I-35 is better habitat for ringtails than east of I-35. What would they actually need to measure to make claims about habitat quality? 

Den availability, food availability, and water availability.

NDVI measures the presence of trees. True of False

True

You are in grad school at the University of Wyoming studying mule deer migration routes. All you know so far is that they migrate hundreds of miles from their summer ranges in the mountains to their winter ranges in the lowland plains (and back again). Name two remotely-sensed habitat data layers that you think would be important to include in your migration route analysis. And why you think they would be important. 

The two remotely-sensed habitat data layers I would include would be water availability to see if they are also following the water routes. And the second would be cover percentage or where cover is and where they go from there. I think seeing how they interact with water and cover availability while migrating would be good to include in a migration route analysis. 

Which of these is generally best for quantifying the height of grass?

Robel pole

Density board

Quadrat

Densiometer

Robel pole

Which of these is true about dormant season burns? (select all that apply)

Easier to control and generally less risky than growing season burns, and they require fire breaks.

You work for TPWD as a heavy machine operator and your supervisor said she wants you to knock down some brush from behind the visitors center so the view is better. What should you attach to your tractor?

Roller chopper