Publication Details
Site-level habitat models for the endemic, threatened Cheat Mountain salamander (Plethodon nettingi): the importance of geophysical and biotic attributes for predicting occurrence
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Year Published
2008
Publication
Biodiversity and Conservation. 17: 1475-1492.
Abstract
The federally threatened Cheat Mountain salamander (Plethodon nettingi; hereafter CMS) is known to occur in approximately 70 small, scattered populations in the Allegheny Mountains of eastern West Virginia, USA. Current conservation and management efforts on federal, state, and private lands involving CMS largely rely on small scale, largely descriptive studies of habitat associations from a few sample sites. To address the critical need for quantitative data, we used an information-theoretic approach to elucidate site-level habitat relationships of CMS relative to a suite of biotic and abiotic habitat variables measured across the species' range. We collected data on 18 explanatory habitat variables at CMS-occupied (n = 67) and random (n = 37) sites in the summer of 2006 and examined CMS habitat relationships using a priori, logistic regression models with information-theoretic model selection.
Citation
Dillard, Lester O.; Russell, Kevin R.; Ford, W. Mark. 2008. Site-level habitat models for the endemic, threatened Cheat Mountain salamander (Plethodon nettingi): the importance of geophysical and biotic attributes for predicting occurrence. Biodiversity and Conservation. 17: 1475-1492.