Browsing by Author "Moen, Ron"
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Item Food Availability for Wood Turtles (Glyptemys Insculpta) in Managed and Natural Woodlands(2016) Goebel, Katelin; Cochrane, Madaline; Brown, Donald; Moen, RonA study on wood turtles was started in the spring of 2015 by UMD scientists and the MN DNR to assess habitat use and responses to management actions. Turtles were fitted with GPS units and VHF transmitters for tracking purposes. Wood turtles are largely terrestrial and use forested areas for foraging.Item Mammal Mediated Dispersal of Mycorrhizal Fungi: Using Microscopy as a Method for Quantifying Diet and Fungal Richness(2024-04-30) Weiss, Teagan; Joyce, Michael; Stephens, Ryan; Moen, RonSmall mammals help initiate mycorrhizal fungal networks by consuming fungi and dispersing spores through their scat. Quantifying small mammal diets can help define the role these species play in mediating the colonization of mycorrhizal fungal networks that play important roles in ecosystem health such as soil aggregation, carbon sequestration, and tree establishment. In this study, fecal material was collected from the gastrointestinal tracts of small mammal specimens to be analyzed for diet quantification. Preliminary results found red-backed voles to have the greatest fungal abundance on average, with fungi making up 83% of their diet. Short-tailed shrew diets were composed primarily of insects, while White-footed mice and Deer-mice diets were composed primarily of plants and insects.Item MASTODONS (Mammut americanum) AND THE LATE-GLACIAL VEGETATION OF THE EASTERN USA(Geological Society of America, 2018-11) Drazan, Jacqueline L; Mooers, Howard D; Moen, Ron; Pastor, John; Larson, Phillip C; Swartz, Jennifer A; David, Mady K; Bopray, Croix K; Jaksa, Michael P; Messer, Blake SNumerous studies of tooth plaques and remains of gut contents of have confirmed that mastodon diet was composed of woody browse species, forbs, nuts, and fruits. However, fossil gut contents also suggest that mastodon diet included significant amounts of spruce, even though spruce is a low-quality, chemically-defended food. Most extant large mammals only browse on spruce when all other food sources are exhausted, and mastodon tusk growth increments indicate that mastodons were not food limited as they moved toward extinction (Fisher, 2009). Here we review the vegetation associated with mastodon habitat from the Great Lakes to the Gulf Coast, USA, over the period 18-10 ka cal BP using pollen assemblage data from 29 sites located near proboscidean fossil remains. Pollen data were acquired from the Neotoma Database and pollen abundance was converted into species biomass abundance using the Landscape Reconstruction Algorithm (LRA) of Sugita (2004a, 2004b). Although spruce was the dominant conifer throughout the Great Lakes Region until ca. 10 ka cal BP, deciduous species such as ash, oak, and elm comprised 50% or more of the vegetation assemblages even at the earliest and northernmost sites, and remained at similar levels until mastodon extinction. Many of these species have been found in mastodon gut contents. These vegetation assemblage reconstructions support the suggestion that mastodons were not food limited as they neared extinction. Moreover, these analyses of landscapes surrounding mastodon sites strongly suggest that the contemporaneous forest, composed of large amounts of spruce intermixed with ash, elm, and oak, was unlike the forests found in much of eastern North America today.