Habitat Use of Autumn Migrating Sora in the Mississippi Flyway AR Coop Unit / Nick Seeger Auriel M.V. Fournier – Arkansas Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit – University of Arkansas Doreen C. Mengel – Resource Science Division – Missouri Department of Conservation David G. Krementz – USGS Arkansas Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit – University of Arkansas @RallidaeRule

Wetland Management Managing our remaining wetlands is vital We assume waterfowl management provides for other species Need to understand the tradeoffs for other wetland obligate species Objective – Understand density and selection of habitat by autumn migrating rails in the Mississippi Flyway.

Rails Sora (Porzana carolina) Migratory Shore and Upland Game Bird Support Task Force for Rails and Snipe Priority Information Need How does habitat affect survival? Previous work looked at wetland and point level relationships

Surveying New method based off Perkins et al 2009 ATV flushing surveys Transect Based – Distance Sampling Surveying Talk about our survey methods, I’m not going to touch on the veg methods since I’m not discussing those results. AR Coop Unit / Nick Seeger

Habitat Collection 20 random points per impoundment 20 sora points per impoundment Percent cover in 25 m circle Water depth at 5 points Covariates of Interest Water Depth Annual Moist Soil Vegetation Interspersion

N = 1895

Analysis Generalized Hierarchical Distance Sampling Models Package ‘unmarked’ in R gdistsamp function Only uses available data ‘impoundment level’ relationships Resource Selection Package ‘ResourceSelection’ in R Compares used vs available data ‘point level’ relationships

Implications Rails migrate earlier than waterfowl Current management may not provide what Sora need

Ongoing Work State wide wetland management experiment to look at the impact of early flooding on rails and waterfowl Virginia and Yellow Rail Work Stable Isotopes

Thank You! Managers: Craig Crisler, Ron Bell, Darrin Welchert, Chris Freeman, Kenny Ackley, Steve Whitson, Gary Calvert, Ryan Kelly, Mike Flaspohler, Jason Wilson, Mick Hanan, Matt Bowyer, Keith Cordell, Kevin Brunke, Brad Pendley Technicians: Matt Boone, Leslie Brinkman, Dan Datlof, Jon Fournier, Justin Lehman, Nick Seeger, Hailee Pasivich Funding: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Missouri Department of Conservation Arkansas Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit University of Arkansas DDF Program Arkansas Audubon Society Trust

Presentation : tinyurl.com/h3b8jsd Questions? aurielfournier.github.io aurielfournier@gmail.com @RallidaeRule #MORails Presentation : tinyurl.com/h3b8jsd