DOI: 10.5061/dryad.7d7wm37xs
title: Human land-use effects on mammalian mesopredator occupancy of a northeastern Connecticut landscape

description: Mammalian mesopredators—mid-sized carnivores—are ecologically,
 economically and socially important. With their adaptability to a variety
 of habitats and diets, loss of apex predators and forest regrowth, many of
 these species are increasing in number throughout the northeastern USA.
 However, currently the region is seeing extensive landscape alterations,
 with an increase in residential and industrial development especially at
 the expense of existing forest and small-scale farmland. We sought to
 understand how important an existing mosaic of working lands (timberland
 and farmland) in a forested landscape is to mesopredator species. We did
 this through studying mesopredator occupancy across three land uses (or
 habitat types): forest reserve (protected), timber harvest (shelterwood
 cuts) and field (both crop yielding and fallow) in and around a 3200-ha
 forest in northeastern Connecticut. We examined coyote (Canis latrans),
 bobcat (Lynx rufus), fisher (Pekania pennanti), and raccoon (Procyon
 lotor) occupancy using paired camera traps across juxtaposed reserve,
 shelterwood and field units from April 2018 to March 2019. We created a
 priori habitat variable models for each species and season, as well as
 analyzed the impact of habitat types on each species. Throughout the year
 bobcats positively associated with foliage height diversity, and had the
 highest use of shelterwoods and lowest of fields. Land use utilization
 varied seasonally for coyotes and raccoons, with higher use of fields than
 reserves and shelterwoods for half the year and no difference between land
 uses the other half. Both species were not strongly associated with any
 particular habitat variables. Reserve forest was moderately to highly used
 by all species for at least half the year, and highly use year-round by
 fisher. Our findings reveal that a mosaic of intact forest and working
 lands, timber harvest and agriculture can support mesopredator diversity.
description: Mesopredator mammal presence absence data was collected from 50
 paired Bushnell Trophy Cam HD camera traps in the Yale Myers Forest from
 April 2018 through February 2019. Within each season, we sampled on three
 replicate sets of 21 survey days. For analysis, the 21 survey days were
 condensed down to 7 survey days, with every three days grouped together
 into a single survey, consistent with other protocols (Cove et al., 2017).
 For illustration, a presence (1)/absence (0) sequence of 100-000-001 (9
 surveys) was reduced to 1-0-1 (3 surveys). The raw presence absence data
 is provided. For habitat variables, at each camera trap location we
 measured canopy cover, foliage height diversity, volume of coarse woody
 debris, and snag density. All other habitat variables were extracted at
 1km buffer radius from each camera trap site, and the data was pulled from
 the National Land Cover, Yale Myers Forest and National Elevation
 Databases. For further methodological description see associated
 paper.
description: Presence Absence mesopredator data by species and season. This
 file contains presence (1) and absence (0) data for each mesopredator
 species per site across four seasons. The species included are coyote,
 bobcat, racoon and fisher.
 mesopredator_presence_absence_data.xlsx Habitat
 Variables. This file contains habitat variables data associated with each
 site. The sites in this file are the same as in the Presence absence data
 file. A ReadMe file for the dataset is attached for
 further description of all files.