• Login
    View Item 
    •   Home
    • University of Alaska Fairbanks
    • UAF Graduate School
    • Biological Sciences
    • View Item
    •   Home
    • University of Alaska Fairbanks
    • UAF Graduate School
    • Biological Sciences
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Browse

    All of Scholarworks@UACommunitiesPublication DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsTypeThis CollectionPublication DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsType

    My Account

    Login

    First Time Submitters, Register Here

    Register

    Statistics

    Display statistics

    Snow as structural habitat for wolverines in a changing Arctic

    • CSV
    • RefMan
    • EndNote
    • BibTex
    • RefWorks
    Thumbnail
    Name:
    Glass_T_2022.pdf
    Size:
    9.917Mb
    Format:
    PDF
    Download
    Author
    Glass, Thomas Rutherford Winder
    Chair
    Kielland, Knut
    Committee
    Breed, Greg
    Williams, Cory
    Robards, Martin
    Keyword
    Wolverine
    Habitat
    North Slope
    Wolverine behavior
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/11122/13010
    Abstract
    Arctic snowpack provides critical wintertime habitat for animals to facilitate thermoregulation and avoid predators. Wolverines (Gulo gulo) are iconic among such animals, relying on snow burrows for resting sites and reproductive dens. Most of the knowledge regarding this mesocarnivore's association with snow, however, has so far originated in more southerly latitudes. In this dissertation, I investigated Arctic wolverines' behaviors associated with snow, focusing on how specific snow properties influence resting, habitat selection, and avoiding predators. Motivated by the paucity of published descriptions of wolverine resting burrows and reproductive dens on tundra, I first described terrain features and architecture of such sites. I found that resting burrows typically consist of a single tunnel leading to a resting chamber, sometimes associated with non-snow structure such as stream cutbanks and river shelf ice. By contrast, reproductive dens typically consist of longer tunnels associated with snowdrift-forming terrain. Second, I used GPS collar data from 21 adult wolverines, coupled with snowpack information at 10 meter pixel resolution, to evaluate wolverine habitat selection and movement response to snow depth, density, and melt status. I found that wolverines select deeper, denser snow, except when snow is melting, likely reflecting resting site use. Third, I developed a machine learning model to classify wolverine behaviors using tri-axial accelerometers based on direct observations of three captive wolverines, and applied this model to free-living wolverines in Arctic Alaska. I found that the model performs better when allowed to predict behaviors as "unknown," and that it accurately predicts resting, food handling, running, and scanning surroundings. Finally, based in part on this classification model, I evaluated the extent to which wolverines' use of snow burrows and surface beds for resting sites is influenced by thermoregulatory needs versus predation avoidance. I found evidence in support of both demands driving resting behavior; wolverines trade thermoregulation off against predation avoidance by resting on the snow surface on warm, sunny days, but use snow burrows on cold, dark days to meet both demands simultaneously. Collectively, this dissertation demonstrates the importance of Arctic snowpack to wolverines, a topic of increasing importance as the snow season shortens with climate change, and serves as a model for investigating behavioral processes associated with snow among other species.
    Description
    Dissertation (Ph.D.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2022
    Table of Contents
    Chapter 1: Introduction -- Chapter 2: Terrain features and architecture of wolverine (Gulo gulo) resting burrows and reproductive dens on Arctic tundra -- Chapter 3: Spatiotemporally variable snow properties drive habitat use of an Arctic mesopredator -- Chapter 4: Accounting for unknown behaviors of free-living animals in accelerometer-based classification models: demonstration on a wide-ranging mesopredator -- Chapter 5: Trade-off between predation risk and behavioural thermoregulation drives resting behaviour in a cold-adapted mesocarnivore -- Chapter 6: Conclusion -- Appendices.
    Date
    2022-05
    Type
    Dissertation
    Collections
    Biological Sciences

    entitlement

     
    ABOUT US|HELP|BROWSE|ADVANCED SEARCH

    The University of Alaska Fairbanks is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer and educational institution and is a part of the University of Alaska system.

    ©UAF 2013 - 2023 | Questions? ua-scholarworks@alaska.edu | Last modified: September 25, 2019

    Open Repository is a service operated by 
    Atmire NV
     

    Export search results

    The export option will allow you to export the current search results of the entered query to a file. Different formats are available for download. To export the items, click on the button corresponding with the preferred download format.

    By default, clicking on the export buttons will result in a download of the allowed maximum amount of items.

    To select a subset of the search results, click "Selective Export" button and make a selection of the items you want to export. The amount of items that can be exported at once is similarly restricted as the full export.

    After making a selection, click one of the export format buttons. The amount of items that will be exported is indicated in the bubble next to export format.