Dynamic Patterns of Resource Selection in Northern Bobwhite across the Annual Cycle in a Region with Poor Edaphic Conditions

Developing successful management strategies requires an understanding of how an organism's resource needs change over the course of its life cycle. For almost a century, northern bobwhite (Colinus virginianus) populations have been declining range-wide, mostly as a result of habitat loss and degradation. Resource selection studies conducted at coarse-temporal resolutions and in areas with fertile soils form the majority of current management recommendations for bobwhites. In this thesis, we quantified resource selection patterns for 1,302 bobwhites in a region with poor soil conditions with respect to several common management practices (fire, fallow fields, supplemental feeding, and brush management [i.e., normalized vegetation difference index, NDVI]) and assessed the variation of selection at coarse- and fine-temporal resolutions. Herein, we also assessed cumulative survival of northern bobwhite chicks 11-13 days post hatch in a region with poor edaphic conditions and examined the effect of transmitter weight (1.2g vs 0.8g) to improve current tracking technologies available for precocial young. Our daily moving window analysis revealed strong selection to be near fallow fields from March-October compared to the rest of the year (November – February). Bobwhites exhibited strong positive selection for areas with a higher NDVI value (e.g., denser vegetation) throughout their annual cycle. Supplemental feed lines were selected for, year-round with the strongest preference exhibited from October-March. Bobwhites exhibited strong avoidance behavior for areas that had undergone a burn for ~18 weeks (125 days), much sooner than reported in other regions. Furthermore, we did not find support that variation in survival by transmitter weight (1.2g vs 0.8g) was significant and rather, that variation in daily survival rate was better explained by year and capture date. This research exemplifies the importance of assessing resource selection at a fine temporal resolution as they were able to parse out key shifts in selection that were not recognized in the coarse temporal analysis. Future work should focus on utilizing the daily moving window format for resource selection analyses to improve current, on-the-ground management strategies, and assess the response of Northern Bobwhite at all life stages following extreme weather events, especially in the coastal plain of North Carolina.