Browsing by Author "Curry, Jessica"

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    Diversity within Small Mammal Communities of Forested Sites around Itasca State Park and Nearby Prairie Sites
    (2011-02-09) Curry, Jessica
    Biodiversity is a hot topic in science today because we are in a time of great urbanization and wild populations of animals are being threatened every day. Defined, biodiversity is the study of species richness (Blake et al. 2008). Fraser and Currie (1996) examine some hypothesizes that affect biodiversity. Those factors include area, available energy, environmental stress, environmental stability, disturbance, biological interactions and history factors. This experiment was designed to compare nine different habitats including burned deciduous, unburned deciduous, burned red pine, unburned red pine, aspen, bog, and three different prairies Rush, Coborn and Wauben DNR wildlife management area sites with two trap grids per prairie. Information recorded at every trap site included trap station, type of species, mass, sex, and individual marking for recapture purposes. A variety of forested habitats were chosen in order to observe any differences the environments might have on biodiversity.
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    Effects of Plains Pocket Gopher (Geomys bursarius) Mound Building on Plant Diversity
    (2011-02-09) Curry, Jessica; Avendano, Javier; Peterson, Julie
    The plains pocket gopher (Geomys bursarius) is a member of the order Rodentia and family Geomyidae. The effects of these subterranean herbivores on vegetation can arise from diet selection, foraging behavior, and burrow structure and dynamics. In the absence of pocket gophers there is higher soil fertility which lead to higher plant biomass, in turn reduces light availability at the surface. Our study was designed to examine the effect of gopher mounds on plant diversity. Of 256 unique patches of vegetation sampled we found that 195 (76%) were associated with a gopher mound and 61 (24%) were not associated with a mound. Of the total patches surveyed 28 (11%) were associated with new mounds, 81 (32%) with abandoned mounds, and 86 (33%) with old mounds. While the mounds may be detrimental to plant diversity while they are active, once they are abandoned by the gophers they become beneficial.