Mammals

WARC Researchers are using a variety of methods to assess mammal communities across the Greater Everglades.

WARC researchers partnered with beach mice managers and biologists to estimate habitat objectives and the amount of effort needed to achieve the habitat objective (i.e., management efficiency) for three beach mice subspecies in Florida’s panhandle.

WARC scientists are testing and developing methods for the isolation of cervid exosomes from blood samples, followed by microRNA extraction and next generation sequencing.

WARC researchers are organizing Florida bonneted bat echolocation recordings into a database to assess population trends and bat response to management actions.

WARC researchers will estimate the density and distribution of bobcats in relation to environmental variables through the development of spatially explicit capture-recapture and occupancy models.

USGS researchers are working with partners to assess the health and foraging behavior of Florida manatees in the northern Indian River Lagoon and Banana River, areas that have experienced declining seagrasses due to an extended phytoplankton bloom.

USGS is working with partners to understand how the federally protected Florida manatee population changes over time and responds to threats.

Collisons between wildlife and vehicles threaten many species, and can lead to human loss of life, injuries, and loss of property. USGS is developing models to help evaluate the effectiveness of wildlife protection zones and optimize the design of these protected areas.

The U.S. Agency for International Development‘s regional mission in East Africa (USAID/EA) and contributing USAID bilateral missions in the region have partnered with the U.S. Department of the Interior’s International Technical Assistance Program (DOI-ITAP) to strategically leverage DOI expertise as it pertains to wildlife poaching and wildlife trafficking.

Long-term monitoring data in the Manatee Individual Photo-identification System (MIPS), developed and coordinated by WARC-Sirenia Project in collaboration with Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Research Institute and Mote Marine Laboratory, are the basis for modeling manatee demography rates.

Nuclear microsatellite markers have been developed and implemented on ~2,000 West Indian manatees. These markers provide individual genetic fingerprints for mark-recapture studies, population structure information for the conservation of unique or isolated populations, and pedigree and relatedness information for addressing inbreeding and breeding structure patterns.

Manatees are tropical to subtropical in distribution and, with few exceptions, Florida is the northern limit of their natural winter range. The availability of warm-water habitat during winter is critical for the future persistence of the population in Florida.