2025/03/21 by Anna Kase, Mason Fidino, Elizabeth W. Lehrer +1 · 1 voice
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Environmental Science · #Animal Ecology and Behavior Studies #Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies #Forest Ecology and Biodiversity Studies
paper · doi:10.60102/stacks-25001
openalex publication_date 2025/03/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/11
Colonization and extinction dynamics are fundamental processes that determine species’ distributions yet nuances of these processes are often overlooked when trying to estimate them. In this study we used dynamic occupancy models to estimate how colonization rates vary when nearby habitat patches are occupied by a species of interest. Our model parameterized colonization as either local (i.e., occurred when a habitat patch was within 2.5 km and was occupied by the species of interest in the previous time step) or long-distance (i.e., occurred when habitat patches within 2.5 km were not occupied by the species of interest in the previous time step). We applied our model to nearly a decade of striped skunk (Mephitis mephitis) camera trap data collected throughout Chicago, Illinois, USA and quantified associations between site-level colonization and persistence rates and proximity to the nearest known stream or river, percentage of developed open space, urbanization, and sampling season (winter, spring, summer, and fall). We found that local colonization was lowest in the fall season and largely controlled by the number of nearby habitat patches occupied by striped skunk. Long-distance colonization was greatest in the fall and positively covaried with developed open space. The probability of skunk persistence was roughly 0.60 adjacent to natural water sources and declined to 0.01 at 14.00 km from natural water sources. Using simulations from our best-fit model we determined that striped skunk occupancy was largely dictated by local colonization and persistence, which collectively accounted for about 80% of the variation in striped skunk occupancy throughout Chicago. Long-distance colonization during the fall season was likely affected by striped skunk offspring dispersing across the landscape. These results demonstrate that by splitting colonization into separate sub-processes, we can more accurately forecast near term changes in species distribution through space and time.