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 The occasional cougar or bear sighted in the Southern Illinois
area notwithstanding, coyotes and bobcats are pretty much the
apex wildlife predators in Illinois. The four-legged hunters
like to sink their fangs into just about anything, be it
feathered or furry, while living everywhere from farm fields, to
city neighborhoods and college campuses to the deep, dark woods
of the state’s national forests and state parks.
Nicole Gorman, a graduate student in zoology and research
assistant at SIU’s Cooperative Wildlife Research Laboratory, is
studying bobcat and coyote movement in Southern and Central
Illinois and their impact on areas they live in. A Granger,
Indiana, native, Gorman is focusing on multispecies systems and
the spatial behavior of wildlife in the two different
environments – one forested and the other agricultural and more
influenced by humans.
Keeping an eye on predators
It’s important that scientists study midsized predators such as
bobcats and coyotes because they are the top predator species
throughout much of North America, Gorman said. Looking closely
at their impact on their prey and ecosystems is elemental to
understanding how things work together.
“Studying predator movement specifically can provide scientists
with more details about their behavior and how they might be
interacting with their environments and other species around
them,” Gorman said. “This understanding can lead to effective
wildlife management, benefiting predator and prey species
alike.”
Gorman began the project in November 2019. Since starting the
project, she and others have captured and tracked 33 of the
predators at two sites, including SIU’s Touch of Nature
Environmental Center and Giant City State Park near Makanda and
the area around Lake Shelbyville in Central Illinois.
Getting up close and personal
Gorman captures the animals using foot-hold and cage traps,
which safely detain them. But catching the wily creatures is an
extremely complex process, she said.
“We have to constantly think one step ahead of what the animals
may do,” she said.
Once captured, each bobcat and coyote is fitted with a collar
that transmits their GPS location, which is recorded every 90
minutes. She then uses the uploaded data to narrow down each
individual’s home range and the habitat types available to it,
such as forest, agriculture and the wildland-urban interface.
Once the collar has been attached to an animal for one year, it
automatically drops off for retrieval.
The data may reveal the animal’s habitat preferences, as well as
what they tend to avoid. She also is examining interactions with
deer and fawns and specifically whether the predators tend to
move toward areas where fawns live during the summer.
After examining all the data, she also hopes to
determine how individualistic the behaviors of bobcats and
coyotes are, and how such differences impact the ways in which
they select habitat.
Gorman’s work is part of a larger project studying white-tailed
deer movement and their predators around Illinois. The U.S.
Wildlife Restoration Fund, in collaboration with the Illinois
Department of Natural Resources, is funding the work.
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The study, which she hopes to complete in December,
keeps her busy.
“When I’m not in the field for captures or in class, I’ve worked on
analyzing the data, looking at home range size and location, as well
as the resources that the predators are selecting within their home
ranges,” Gorman said.
SIU values hands-on research for students
Guillaume Bastille-Rousseau, an assistant professor in the
Cooperative Wildlife Research Laboratory, supervises Gorman’s work
and her development as a graduate student. He said bobcats were at
the edge of extinction just 50 years ago in Illinois, but previous
conservation efforts by others helped bring them back.
“Understanding the space-use behavior of these predators will help
us further understand their habitat requirements and how they can
co-habit with humans,” Bastille-Rousseau said. “Coyotes are found
throughout Illinois, including in urban, suburban and rural areas.
Nicole’s project specifically tries to understand how both species
adapt their behaviors across these different landscapes.”
Surprising preliminary findings
While the data are still coming in, Gorman said she’s been
fascinated to find the extent of their movement seems to be related
to the type of habitat available to them.
“The individuals here in Southern Illinois have a lot of forested
habitat available to them and have smaller home ranges in general,”
she said. “In contrast, the individuals we track in Central Illinois
live in a much more agricultural area, which causes them to have
much larger home ranges and move more around their area. This
difference includes home ranges as small as 2 square miles to as
large as over 200 square miles.”
Another surprise is how far some of the animals will range.
“Some of them leave the area completely,” she said. “One coyote
we’ve named Arwen made a 100-mile journey from Lake Shelbyville to
the eastern suburbs of St. Louis, and a bobcat, Mithrandir, made
several excursions from Mattoon, Illinois, before heading 120 miles
northeast, settling in Indiana.
“It has been fascinating to see the aspects of their environment
that influence predator behavior and how individuals react
differently to the world around them.”
Getting to know Illinois top predators in such an intimate way has
been extremely rewarding, Gorman said.
“Bobcats and coyotes are extremely interesting animals, and their
adaptability allows them to live in many different surroundings,
including around humans,” she said. “Many people probably have
predators around their neighborhoods here in Southern Illinois and
never see any sign of them.”
SIU opens the future
Gorman currently is preparing to pursue her doctoral degree and
hopes to become a wildlife biologist for the federal government.
Making a positive impact on wildlife conversation is her ultimate
goal, and SIU is helping her prepare for that journey.
“The guidance from my advisor, as well as the close-knit community
of the other graduate students in the Cooperative Wildlife Research
Lab, have been extremely helpful in both my journey with this
project and preparing me for my future research career,” she said.
Bastille-Rousseau said Gorman is specializing in wildlife ecology
and management, and that typical jobs in that field require an
eclectic mix of skillsets ranging from hands-on experiences handling
wildlife in harsh field settings to advanced computational skills.
Her project is unique in that she can be hiking in frigid or pouring
weather checking her traps for bobcats or coyotes in the morning and
be attending a class or analyzing her data on the computer in the
afternoon.
[by Tim Crosby] |
