9307 ‎(2)‎

• UCREFRP Catalog Number: 9307
• Author: Germaine, S. S.
• Title: Relationships of Birds, Lizards, and Nocturnal Rodents to Their Habitat in the Greater Tucson Area, Arizona.
• USFW Year: 1995.
• USFW - Doc Type: Phoenix, AZ.
• Copyright Material: NO

RELATIONSHII'S OF BIRDS, LIZARDS, AND NOCTURNAL RODENTS TO 'THEIR HABITAT IN TUCSON, ARIZONA
Wintering Birds. Variables generated for
winter bird:habitat analysis were the same as those
generated for breeding birds. I subjected
abundances of 8 ranked bird species and 15 habitat
variables to Gamma correlation analysis. I then
identified the relationship between each habitat
variable and the bird species it correlated with by
graphing mean bird species abundance against each
habitat variable.
Lizards. Variables describing the lizard
community at each plot were: abundance of each
species, species richness, and total abundance,
summed across all species. For each species at
each plot, the abundance value was calculated as
the mean of the 2 visits.
Ranked lizard species abundances and habitat
variables were subjected to Gamma correlation
analysis. I then plotted mean lizard species
abundance against classes of each habitat variable.
Since the lizard sample was smaller than the bird
sample, I chose a subset of 5 of the 15 habitat
variables used for the bird community analysis
and the 4 lizard species that met sample size
requirements.
I used correlation and forward stepwise
multiple regression analysis to develop 2 predictive
models associating species richness (all species
inclusive) and total abundance with the 5 habitat
variables. I treated outliers and diagnostics the
same as for breeding birds. The lizard data set
was not large enough to cross validate the model.
Wildlife Community Descriptors. I used
Spearman ranked correlation analyses to compare
the association of 3 parameters of the bird and
lizard communities across the urban gradient.
Species richness, total abundance, and (modified
Hill's [1973]) evenness ratio Fl, o; Alatalo 1981), for
the 5 bird groups (breeding native, non-native,
indicator guild, wintering native and non-native)
and for lizards were correlated with the habitat
variables that loaded into each group's predictive
model, and with a simple estimator of plot
heterogeneity. Habitat variables that loaded with
each breeding bird group were used for associated
wintering bird groups. Heterogeneity was the
number of major land cover types present at each
plot.
Nocturnal Rodents. I compared the abundance
of each species, species richness, and total
abundance between the treatments and controls in
a 2 x 2 contingency table using a 2-tailed Fisher's
exact test (Statsoft 1995). I also performed Post-
hoc tests via Chi-square subdivision to determine
if > 1 cell contained significantly different values
of any of the dependent variables (Zar 1984).
Where expected values in the subdivision test did
not meet the test sample size requirements, I
employed a Yates correction (Wilkinson 1990,
Statsoft 1995). The total abundance data set
contained large enough sample sizes to
approximate a normal Chi-square distribution, so
I tested changes in total abundance with the Chi-
square statistic instead of Fisher's exact test (Zar
1984).
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SZEPHEN S. GERMAINE 1995
ARIZONA GAME fr FISH DEPARTMENT, TECH. REP. 20 11