ABSTRACT
Knowledge of spatial needs of white-tailed deer is fundamental to effective management of their populations and habitats (Fulbright and Ortega-S, 2006). White-tailed deer, and other large mammals, require temporally and spatially diverse elements of habitat such as food, water, and cover, and these mammals can have signicant effects on vegetation composition, community structure, and ecosystem processes, thereby acting as keystone species (Molvar et al., 1993; Wallis and de Vries, 1995; Hobbs, 1996; Bowyer et al., 1997; Simberloff, 1998; Kie et al., 2002, 2003). Landscape structure can affect habitat selection by
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 181 Scale and Movement Patterns ................................................................................................................ 182
Home Range ..................................................................................................................................... 184 Habitat Selection ............................................................................................................................... 186 Migration .......................................................................................................................................... 186 Dispersal ........................................................................................................................................... 187
Response to Landscape Heterogeneity and Land-Use Change .............................................................. 188 Deer Use of Cultural Landscapes ..................................................................................................... 189 White-tailed Deer as Agents of Landscape Change ......................................................................... 189 Landscape Historical Perspective ..................................................................................................... 190
Sexual Segregation ................................................................................................................................ 190 Describing, Detecting, and Dening Sexual Segregation ................................................................ 191
Group Composition and Sex Ratios ............................................................................................ 192 Scale ............................................................................................................................................. 193 Niche-Based Approach for Understanding Sexual Segregation ................................................. 194
Hypotheses for Sexual Segregation ................................................................................................. 195 Reproductive Strategy Hypothesis ............................................................................................... 195 Activity-Budget Hypothesis......................................................................................................... 196 Social-Factors Hypothesis .......................................................................................................... 197 Scramble-Competition Hypothesis ............................................................................................. 197 Forage-Selection Hypothesis ....................................................................................................... 198 Bell-Jarman Hypothesis ............................................................................................................. 199 Gastrocentric Hypothesis ............................................................................................................ 199 Predation Hypothesis .................................................................................................................. 201 Multiple Causations and Trade-Offs ........................................................................................... 201
Role of Sexual Segregation in Management .................................................................................... 202 Population Dynamics .................................................................................................................. 202 Habitat Manipulations and the Sexes .......................................................................................... 203
Future Directions ............................................................................................................................. 204 References .............................................................................................................................................. 207
deer, patterns of movement, and home-range size, but those effects also inuence the developmental trajectory of landscapes (Kie et al., 2002). Spatial distributions, movement patterns, and the corresponding effects on landscapes, communities, or ecosystems may be intense but seasonal for migratory populations. Such effects may be of longer duration with ne-scale changes strongly inuenced by densitydependent processes (sensu McCullough, 1979) in areas where white-tailed deer are resident. Large mammals tend to be vagile and often integrate landscape processes, such as nutrient cycling and rates of mineralization over large areas (Chapter 12) and herbivores often concentrate foraging and deposition of urine and feces in localized areas (McNaughton, 1985; Etchberger et al., 1988; Ruess and McNaughton, 1987, 1988; Day and Detling, 1990; Bowyer and Kie, 2006; Stewart et al., 2006). Because large mammals do not use habitats uniformly, changes in ecosystem processes resulting from movements of these mammals may lead to increases in patchiness within habitats, which ultimately inuences successional changes and habitat selection in ecosystems inhabited by white-tailed deer and other large mammals. Moreover, resource selection by white-tailed deer and other large mammals can occur at both extremely large and ne scales, necessitating a hierarchical approach to understanding their behavior and ecology (Johnson et al., 2001, 2002; Bowyer and Kie, 2006). Moreover, the sexes of deer may behave quite differently to meet their nutritional and reproductive needs (Kie and Bowyer, 1999). Finally, understanding life-history characteristics of white-tailed deer and other large mammals requires that biologists consider entire landscapes rather than isolated patches of habitat for conservation and management (Kie et al., 2002, 2003).
