MAMMALIAN HABITAT & PREDATOR ASSOCIATIONS ON A BARRIER ISLAND COMPLEX 

Fort De Soto is a 260-hectare park in Pinellas County, Florida that consists of several barrier islands connected to the mainland by a road. Camera trapping is known to be an appropriate noninvasive method for species monitoring. We deployed 19 camera traps throughout various habitats in the park to determine if habitat and predator activity influenced species photographic rate. Cameras were active from sunset to sunrise between February 2022 and July 2023. Six species of mammals were photographed enough to be used in our analysis: coyote, marsh rabbit, nine-banded armadillo, raccoon, roof rat, and Virginia opossum. To quantify the habitat surrounding each camera we digitized aerial images, creating 50m buffers around each location, and calculated the amount of beach, mangrove, forest, and human-dominated landscape using ArcGIS. We used Generalized Linear Mixed Models to determine the relationship between habitat use, wet and dry season, and coyote presence on species photographic rates. No significant habitat associations were found for coyotes, armadillos, marsh rabbits, and roof rats. Raccoons had a significant association with mangroves in the dry season and opossums had a significant association with forest both in the wet and dry season. Coyotes influenced armadillo, marsh rabbit, and opossum photographic rates during the wet season, and marsh rabbits during the dry season. Our results suggest that the majority of mammal species at Fort De Soto use a variety of habitats with no observable specialization at this spatial scale, however have a nuanced association with predators. 

For more information contact lejosler@eckerd.edu 

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