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Potential of Urban Habitats As Reptile and Amphibian Refuges in West Virginia Scott Onesj Marshall University Marshall Digital Scholar Theses, Dissertations and Capstones 1-1-2010 Potential of Urban Habitats as Reptile and Amphibian Refuges in West Virginia Scott onesJ Follow this and additional works at: http://mds.marshall.edu/etd Part of the Animal Sciences Commons, and the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Commons Recommended Citation Jones, Scott, "Potential of Urban Habitats as Reptile and Amphibian Refuges in West Virginia" (2010). Theses, Dissertations and Capstones. Paper 677. This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Marshall Digital Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses, Dissertations and Capstones by an authorized administrator of Marshall Digital Scholar. For more information, please contact [email protected]. POTENTIAL OF URBAN HABITATS AS REPTILE AND AMPHIBIAN REFUGES IN WEST VIRGINIA A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate College of Marshall University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science Biological Sciences by Scott Jones Thomas K. Pauley, Committee Chair Dan K. Evans, Committee Member Frank S. Gilliam, Committee Member Marshall University May 2010 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A lot of people helped to make this thesis possible. First I would like to thank Dr. Pauley for allowing me to become a part of the Marshall University Herpetology Lab. I have greatly enjoyed my time at Marshall University and the chance to learn from Dr. Pauley, who has been a great advisor. He was always patient and understanding and provided me with a multitude of opportunities to learn. I definitely appreciate salamanders more after joining Dr. Pauley’s lab. Dr. Dan Evans and Dr. Frank Gilliam were indispensable in aiding me through this process. Both guided me in designing various aspects of my study. Dr. Evans was incredibly helpful with plant identification both in the lab and in the field. Dr. Gilliam guided me through the statistics and also much of the plant and environmental data collection. I would also like to thank all of the people who helped me in the field. Aaron Gooley, Nick Shieler, Derek Bozzell, Nathan Shepard, Kevin Messenger, James Stanton, Helen Zhu, Reid Downer, Kevin Saunders, Nathalie Aall, and Doug Horchler all assisted me. All the members of the herpetology lab while I was here at Marshall were a big help while discussing ideas and also gave me an opportunity to work on other projects and see various parts of the state, so thanks to Casey Bartkus, Reid Downer, Scott Albaugh, Amanda Spriggs, Tomi Bergstrom, Kevin Saunders, Justin Weiss, Katie Murphy, Casey Bradshaw, Sarah Miloski, Aaron Gooley, Doug Horchler, Kevin Messenger, Nathan Shepard, James Stanton, and Nathalie Aall. A big thanks to Tyler Hern for all of his help with GIS and the maps that make this thesis a little less monotonous. I am sure I am forgetting people, so thanks to anyone else who helped along the way. I’d like to thank my family for all of their support and encouragement along the way, especially my parents, Rose and Dave, without whom I would not be here. Also my sister II Courtney for being there to talk to when I needed it, my grandmother Bernadette for putting up with my love for snakes, and my Uncle Steve for carting me around while I was at home in Pennsylvania when I needed it. I would also like to thank Dr. Pauley, Dr. Evans, and Dr. Gilliam for looking over this document and making many helpful edits. Anonymous Marshall University faculty readers aldo made several helpful edits, so thanks to them. Also thanks to Kevin Saunders for reading through the thesis close to the final version and making edits and pointing out things that did not make sense. Thanks to the Marshall University Graduate College for funding. This research was carried out under the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources permit 2009.136. This project was reviewed and approved by the Marshall University Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC): IACUC Project Numbers 421-1, 421-2, 421-3, 421-4, 421-5, 421-6, 421-7, 421-8, 421-9, 421-10, 421-11, 421-12, 421-13, 421-14, 421-15, and 421-16 . III TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements II List of Tables V List of Figures VI Abstract VIII Introduction 1 Objectives 7 Materials and Methods 7 Study Sites 7 Sampling 9 Analysis 13 Results 16 Discussion 71 Works Cited 87 Curriculum Vitae 91 IV LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Hours spent searching for animals at all study sites showing the amount of effort spent on nighttime, daytime, opportunistic, and transect searches. 17 Table 2. List of common and scientific names of the species found in this study. 44 Table 3. Amphibian and reptile species found at Barboursville Park, Beech Fork State Park, and Chief Cornstalk WMA 46 Table 4. Amphibian and reptile species found at Huntington Museum of Art, Green Bottom WMA, and Ritter Park 48 Table 5. Matrix of Reptile and Amphibian Community Similarity Percentages. 50 Table 6. Trees of Green Bottom WMA (Stark 1993). 51 Table 7. Trees of Chief Cornstalk WMA found incidentally during this study. 52 Table 8. List of tree species found at the Huntington Museum of Art, Ritter Park, Barboursville Park, and Beech Fork State Park in this study. 53 Table 9. Plant data from the Huntington Museum of Art. 57 Table 10. Plant data from Barboursville Park. 58 Table 11. Plant data from Beech Fork State Park. 59 Table 12. Plant data from Ritter Park. 60 Table 13. Matrix of Tree Community Similarity Percentages. 63 Table 14. Average soil pH, moisture percentage, organic matter percentage, and leaf litter mass with one standard deviation of the mean at Beech Fork State Park, Ritter Park, Barboursville Park, and the Huntington Museum of Art. 64 V LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Location of the study sites in western West Virginia. 8 Figure 2. Eastern American Toad at the Huntington Museum of Art. 18 Figure 3. Cope’s Gray Treefrogs at Beech Fork State Park. 19 Figure 4. Mountain Chorus Frog at Beech Fork State Park. 20 Figure 5. Northern Spring Peeper at Beech Fork State Park. 21 Figure 6. American Bullfrog at Green Bottom Wildlife Management Area. 22 Figure 7. Northern Green Frog at Green Bottom Wildlife Management Area. 23 Figure 8. Pickerel Frog at Beech Fork State Park, showing characteristic yellow coloration on the underside of the legs. 24 Figure 9. Eastern Spadefoot at Beech Fork State Park. 25 Figure 10. Jefferson Salamander at Beech Fork State Park. 26 Figure 11. Spotted Salamander at Beech Fork State Park. 27 Figure 12. Marbled Salamander at Beech Fork State Park. 28 Figure 13. Northern Dusky Salamander at Chief Cornstalk Wildlife Management Area. 29 Figure 14. Southern Two-lined Salamander at the Huntington Museum of Art. 30 Figure 15. Spring Salamander at the Huntington Museum of Art. 31 Figure 16. Red-spotted Newt at Beech Fork State Park. 32 Figure 17. Cumberland Plateau Salamander at the Huntington Museum of Art. 33 Figure 18. Southern Ravine Salamander at Ritter Park. 34 Figure 19. Eastern Wormsnake at the Huntington Museum of Art. 35 Figure 20. Northern Ring-necked Snake at Chief Cornstalk Wildlife Management Area. 36 Figure 21. Eastern Ratsnake at the Huntington Museum of Art. 37 Figure 22. Eastern Milksnake at Beech Fork State Park. 38 VI Figure 23. Common Snapping Turtle at Beech Fork State Park. 39 Figure 24. Midland Painted Turtle at Green Bottom Wildlife Management Area. 40 Figure 25. Stinkpot from Green Bottom Wildlife Management Area. 41 Figure 26. Eastern Box Turtle at Ritter Park. 42 Figure 27. Common Five-lined Skink at Beech Fork State Park. 43 Figure 28. Canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) ordination plot for Beech Fork State Park (BF), Barboursville Park (BP), Ritter Park (RP), and the Huntington Museum of Art (HM). 55 Figure 29. Centroid values of the canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) for Beech Fork State Park, Barboursville Park, Ritter Park, and the Huntington Museum of Art. 56 Figure 30. Aerial view of Ritter Park showing the animals caught there and the amount of urbanization in and around the site. 65 Figure 31. Aerial view of the Huntington Museum of Art showing the animals caught there and the amount of urbanization in and around the site. 66 Figure 32. Aerial view of Barboursville Park showing the animals caught there and the amount of urbanization in and around the site. 67 Figure 33. Aerial view of Beech Fork State Park showing the animals caught there and the amount of urbanization in and around the site. 68 Figure 34. Aerial view of Green Bottom Wildlife Management Area showing the animals caught there and the amount of urbanization in and around the site. 69 Figure 35. Aerial view of Chief Cornstalk Wildlife Management Area showing the animals caught there and the amount of urbanization in and around the site. 70 Figure 36-38. Trash at Ritter Park. 74 Figure 39. Relationships between daily field effort (number of minutes spent in the field during each day of research) and daily number of observed snakes at the study area in Nigeria. Taken from Luiselli and Akani (2002). 79 VII ABSTRACT Potential of Urban Habitats as Reptile and Amphibian Refuges in West Virginia Scott Jones Urban herpetology is a relatively new field, examining how reptiles and amphibians survive in areas that have been altered by humans. This study sought to add data on urban habitats to the knowledge within West Virginia. I studied six sites: two urban parks (Ritter Park and Barboursville Park), a nature area near an art museum (Huntington Museum of Art), two wildlife management areas (Green Bottom WMA and Chief Cornstalk WMA), and a state park (Beech Fork State Park).
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