User: | Open Learning Faculty Member:
My study is concerned primarily with trail selection by mule deer at varying snow depth in an open field, with my hypothesis being that as snow depth increases, mule deer will increasingly lessen their use of secondary (newly created) trails and increase their use of primary (previously created) trails and established trails -in this case, anthropogenically created snowshoe trails. The underlying ecological processes of my hypothesis are energy conservation, adaptation to human activity, habitat selection, community dynamics, behavioural plasticity, and perhaps nutrient cycling. This last process will not be explored in my study, but as winter is such a tough time for deer, energy expenditure and conservation are very important. That means that the selection of trails through deep snow could potentially be the deciding factor in their survival. Furthermore, I believe, and explore a little bit in my study, that deer are travelling through my study area between bedding areas and browsing areas in adjacent agricultural land. The nutrients from the agricultural land are no doubt sustaining the deer population in the area, and their decision to travel through the open field of my study area must mean they obtain from there is worth the energy expenditure of the travel.
Three keywords for my study could be behavioural plasticity, anthropogenic disturbance exploitation, calorie expenditure.
