Proceedings of the Ninth Mountain Lion Workshop - Carnivore ...

daytime locations, and all points occurring between 21:00 hrs and 05:00 hrs PST as
nighttime locations. Day and night location files were created for each puma, including
the parcel sizes associated with each location point. We calculated the percentage of
locations in each of the 6 parcel size classes for the day and nighttime locations of each
puma. Paired Student’s t-tests were used in JMP 5 ® to identify diel differences in puma
use of the parcel size classes.
Results
GPS collars and capture
We deployed GPS collars on 19 pumas during 2002-2005, with one animal collared
twice. Pumas were tracked by collar during 2002-2006. Fourteen of these collars yielded
successful downloads, representing all data collected by GPS collars on 13 individuals.
Table 1 displays: age class, sex, development zone, collar type, number of location fixes
used in analyses, fix interval, duration of data for each puma, and mortality occurrence
and cause of death. We used only high-quality fixes in analyses for pumas from which
collar downloads were obtained. Pumas whose GPS collars failed were only included in
survival and dispersal analyses, using ARGOS-transmitted GPS collar locations, aerial
and ground VHF locations, and capture and carcass locations (Table 1).
We collared 4 adult male pumas, 4 subadult males, 1 juvenile male (pre-independence), 7
adult females, and 3 subadult females. Nine collared pumas occupied the developed zone
while 10 of the animals lived in the undeveloped zone. Subadult pumas collared in the
undeveloped zone that moved to developing rural areas after independence were
classified as developed zone pumas. Developed zone pumas lived in a mosaic of ranches,
ranchettes, public lands and residential developments networked by highways.
Undeveloped zone pumas occupied a mix of national forest and private timberlands with
few or no residential properties.
Survival
Table 1 displays the number of days that each puma was monitored from first observation
(usually capture date) through the animal’s last documented location. Survival or
mortality at the end of each animal’s monitoring period is noted, as well as cause of
death.
Six of 9 pumas (66.7%) collared in the developed zone were known to have died between
10 weeks and 26 months after capture, while 1 of 10 pumas (10%) died in the developed
zone, 10 months post-capture. Because the death of subadult female 901 was documented
long after collar retrieval (26 months post-capture), we included in analyses only the 10month
period during which this female was tracked by collar, in order to compare
survival between groups monitored for comparable periods. Pumas were monitored for a
mean 296 days with standard deviation of 164 days. Two-sample independent Student’s
t-tests found the number of days pumas were monitored did not differ between sexes
(t = 1.300, df = 17, p = 0.212), ages (t = 0.078, df = 17, p = 0.939), development zone
(t = 0.088, df = 17, p = 0.931) or for animals documented to have survived versus those
that
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