Mating behavior of Eastern Spotted Skunk Spilogale putorius Linnaeus, 1758 (Mammalia: Carnivora: Mephitidae) revealed by camera trap in Texas, USA

Abstract

Eastern Spotted Skunks Spilogale putorius are an understudied Vulnerable small carnivore. Here we report a novel capture of Eastern Spotted Skunks mating via a camera trap in central Texas. This detection adds to the minimal natural history knowledge of the species and highlights the utility of camera traps for documenting rarely observed behaviors.

Conspecific Tolerance in a Solitary Small Carnivore, the Pacific Marten

“…Emerging and improving techniques may yield unique insights into cryptic behaviors, interactions, and drivers of sociality in otherwise solitary carnivore species. For instance, camera traps are increasingly being used to elucidate poorly understood phenomena (e.g., foraging, mating, predation) for many taxa (e.g., Linnell and Lesmeister 2020, Avrin et al 2021, Zhu et al 2022) and provided invaluable sources of evidence to support other observations in our work. Conducting systematic, long-term monitoring of marten rest sites via camera trap arrays could clarify their function and importance in marten social ecology, as rest sites are essential components of individual marten life histories (e.g., Taylor andBuskirk 1994, Wilbert et al 2000) but also appear to play a role in interactions between martens (Zalewski 1997, Joyce 2013.…”