| | Accession Number | 5003439 |
| | Title | Interactions of gulls and Piping Plovers at Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge, Cape |
| | Cod, Mass. |
| | Project Description | This project is designed to address a resource management question posed by Region 5, FWS, |
| | namely, whether breeding Herring and Great Black-backed Gulls are interfering with nest-site |
| | selection by Piping Plovers on South Island, Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge, Cape Cod, Mass. |
| | Detailed data will be taken on all actual interactions between the target species, as well as |
| | quantifying any disturbances in plover biology that might follow therefrom. Should any disturbing |
| | interactions be detected, they will be included in a logistic regression model to be developed to |
| | predict suitable and unsuitable plover habitat on Monomoy, in an effort to determine whether or not |
| | unexplained model variance can be confidently attributed to any interactions between gulls and |
| | plovers that might be demonstrable. Attention will be paid to territory/home-range prospecting by |
| | males and pairs, to egg-laying, to brood-rearing and to post-fledging activities of plovers. It also is |
| | a goal of the project to locate and track all breeding plovers on South Monomoy Island. To obviate |
| | unique, single-season effects, the study will run for several years. |
| | Keywords | disturbance, great black-backed gull, herring gull, interference, migratory bird, monomoy nwr, |
| | national wildlife refuge, piping plover, species interactions, |
| | Principal | J.D. Fraser, Virginia Polytechnic University: fraser@vt.edu; P.A. Buckley, USGS Patuxent |
| | Investigators | Wildlife Research Center: pabuckley@usgs.gov; |
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