Abstract:
White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) have been extensively researched throughout their distribution and in varying habitats. Past research that has focused on comparing deer in urban and rural areas has occurred either spatially or temporally separated. Though this has given researchers insight into how deer utilize each area, it does not identify differences in space use between the two human development classes within a localized area. To answer this exact question, we captured and collared 85 white-tailed deer between January and July of 2015, 2016 in Monroe and Brown counties of southern Indiana. We were specifically interested in using location data collected from collars to see how annual and seasonal home range and core area sizes differed between urban and rural deer populations, as well as any differences in the seasonal space use shifts. We expected urban deer would utilize smaller areas than the surrounding rural population. However, we did not find this to be the case for both females and males. Females utilized areas approximately 60% smaller in urbanized landscapes than rural landscapes both seasonally and annually (p<0.05), but males were found to have no difference in space use between the two landscapes. We expected rural deer to have larger variations in seasonal home range size and shift than urban populations, but found no evidence to suggest that urban deer shift their space use in response to seasonality, rather sex had a larger influence on shifting space use. Our findings suggest that female deer have adjusted to living in an urbanized environment more than males, but further research is needed to identify factors that may influence habitat characteristics that both sexes are selecting for between urban and rural areas.
