Influence of patch- and landscape-level attributes on the movement behavior of raccoons in agriculturally fragmented landscapes

Abstract

We tested the hypotheses that movement rates and home range sizes of raccoons ( Procyon lotor (L., 1758)) inhabiting a highly fragmented landscape would vary in response to local and landscape-level habitat characteristics. Raccoons occupying small forest patches containing limited water sources maintained larger home ranges than raccoons with home ranges established in large forest patches containing abundant sources of water. Raccoons occupying large (>25 ha) forest patches exhibited minimal interindividual variance in home range size compared with raccoons monitored in patches <25 ha. This differing pattern of variance in home range size suggests that critical resources were more widely dispersed within and among small patches, forcing raccoons occupying smaller patches to utilize larger and more spatially disparate areas to satisfy their metabolic and reproductive needs. Movement rates of raccoons were positively related to home range size, although movement rates of males (246.9 m/h) exceeded those of females (188.3 m/h). Moreover, movements of male raccoons primarily were concentrated along forest–agriculture interfaces, whereas female movements were concentrated in forest interiors. Our results indicate that raccoons have modified their movement behavior in agricultural ecosystems in response to the discontinuous nature of resources and suggest that the extent of raccoon space use in these ecosystems is strongly influenced by the availability of non-agricultural resources.