Sage Grouse Flock Characteristics and Habitat Selection in Winter

Temporal and hierarchical spatial components of animal occurrence: conserving seasonal habitat for greater sage‐grouse

“…They also enable investigation of whether the importance of particular landscape features changes across the transition from fringe to core portions of a species distribution, particularly when climatic variables are not incorporated in predictive models (Reino et al 2006, Aldridge and Boyce 2007, Doherty et al 2008, Carpenter et al 2010, Dzialak et al 2011a). For sage-grouse, most information on landscape-level occurrence patterns during winter (as opposed to local-scale data; Eng andSchladweiler 1972, Hupp andBraun 1989) has come from the edge of its distribution where climate, habitat, and the spatial pattern/intensity of human activity differ from core portions of the distribution in ways that are subtle but possibly important in terms of the spatial pattern of occurrence (Beck 1977, Doherty et al 2008, Carpenter et al 2010, Fedy and Aldridge 2011. We present an addition to the body of information on occurrence among sage-grouse during winter that increases the general state of knowledge across its distribution, offers new information on behavior across the diel cycle, and new information on how individuals assemble to comprise population-level responses to landscape features.…”

“…Then, we assessed correlation among covariates using the CORR procedure in SAS and eliminated a covariate if correlation with another variable was high (Pearson product-moment correlation ! j0.7j), retaining the covariate that best reflected the winter ecology of sage-grouse (Eng and Schladweiler 1972, Beck 1977, Remington and Braun 1985, Hupp and Braun 1989, Doherty et al 2008, Carpenter et al 2010. We refitted the model iteratively, dropping the parameter with the largest p-value in each iteration, until all remaining parameters were associated with p 0.05 (Hosmer and Lemeshow 2000).…”

Initial Invasion of Cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) into Burned Piñon-Juniper Woodlands in Western Colorado

“…Accordingly, BCPA patterns displayed by yearling sage-grouse suggest more unfamiliar situations in comparison with adult birds. In contrast, juvenile birds appeared to adopt an intermediate strategy during a brief period (September-March) when they congregate communally (Beck, 1997); hence decisions are influenced more by group behavior.…”

An Observation of Clostridium perfringens in Greater Sage-Grouse

“…Coccidiosis has not been reported to cause fatal epizootics in sage-grouse during the winter, but the elevated prevalence of Eimeria spp. oocysts in winter fecal samples (Scott, 1935) suggests a positive association with seasonal flocking behaviors of sage-grouse (Beck, 1977). We speculate that a similar phenomenon might result in larger numbers of infective Clostridium spores in winter roosting sites.…”