Browsing by Author "Ditchkoff, Stephen"

The deer family (Cervidae) has a nearly world-wide distribution, and deer farming has, in recent years, been gradually accepted as an economically promising industry. It is demonstrated that ungulate body size and horn/antler ...

Chronic wasting disease (CWD), a fatal neurodegenerative disease that affects cervids, has been detected in 33 states across the United States. Currently there are no preventions, treatments, or cures for the disease in ...

A myriad of internal and external factors continuously influence behavior of all animals. One group of environmental factors, abiotic factors (e.g., wind, temperature, and moon phase), are continuously present and constantly ...

Little information is available concerning excursive movements by white-tailed deer. Past studies addressing these movements have approached excursion detection in a manner that we believe is severely limited and that ...

Fluctuating asymmetry has been proposed as an indirect indicator of individual quality. Sexually selected traits, such as deer antlers, are expected to exhibit patterns of decreasing level of fluctuating asymmetry with ...

Wild pigs (Sus scrofa) are a highly invasive species in the United States and millions of dollars are spent annually on removal efforts and damage reduction. Wild pigs may act as ecosystem engineers in areas where they are ...

There still exist gaps in the literature regarding how intrinsic factors influence recruitment success and mate selectivity in white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus). We examined a captive population of white-tailed ...

Wild pigs (Sus scrofa) are an invasive species in North America with known negative impacts on agricultural lands and native ecosystems. To explore one commonly used, but ill-described management strategy, we implemented ...

Prescribed fire is an effective habitat management tool that enhances the production of quality forage for white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), but its effectiveness is largely dependent upon return interval. We ...

Understanding factors that influence reproductive success is of utmost importance to the study of wildlife population dynamics. There are a multitude of factors that can influence a male’s ability to acquire mates, such ...