Michael Cove

• PhD
• Research Curator of Mammalogy at North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences

In their recent article, Batavia et al. (2018) suggest that trophy hunting and taking animal parts is morally wrong, but also note that the practice is generally accepted by conservationists as a source of revenue for local communities and conservation efforts. I agree with their suggestions and applaud them for bringing this conservation conundrum...

With the accelerating pace of global change, it is imperative that we obtain rapid inventories of the status and distribution of wildlife for ecological inferences and conservation planning. To address this challenge, we launched the SNAPSHOT USA project, a collaborative survey of terrestrial wildlife populations using camera traps across the Unite...

Free‐roaming cats are a conservation concern in many areas but identifying their impacts and developing mitigation strategies requires a robust understanding of their distribution and density patterns. Urban and residential areas may be especially relevant in this process because free‐roaming cats are abundant in these anthropogenic landscapes. Her...

The negative impacts of invasive Burmese pythons (Python bivittatus) on mammal communities in mainland South Florida are well-documented. However, few studies have examined the ecological effects of Burmese pythons along their southern invasion front in the Florida Keys. The establishment of Burmese pythons in the Keys could be devastating for isla...

Wildlife must adapt to human presence to survive in the Anthropocene, so it is critical to understand species responses to humans in different contexts. We used camera trapping as a lens to view mammal responses to changes in human activity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Across 163 species sampled in 102 projects around the world, changes in the amo...

Roadkill is widely recognized as one of the primary negative effects of roads on many wildlife species and also has socioeconomic impacts when they result in accidents. A comprehensive dataset of roadkill locations is essential to evaluate the factors contributing to roadkill risk and to enhance our comprehension of its impact on wildlife populatio...

The protozoan parasite _Toxoplasma gondii_ can alter behavior by heightening the boldness of multiple taxa to increase predation by their definitive host—Felids. We screened northern raccoons (_Procyon lotor_) for _Toxoplasma_-infection and monitored American crocodile (_Crocodylus acutus_) nests with camera traps in the Florida Keys, USA. On four...

This publication is part of the Wildlife of Florida fact sheet series, created to provide the public with a quick and accurate introduction to Florida's wildlife, including both native and invasive species. We hope these fact sheets inspire you to learn more about one of Florida's rarest mammals, the Key Largo woodrat, as well as investigate the ot...

Motivation: SNAPSHOT USA is an annual, multicontributor camera trap survey of mammals across the United States. The growing SNAPSHOT USA dataset is intended for tracking the spatial and temporal responses of mammal populations to changes in land use, land cover and climate. These data will be useful for exploring the drivers of spatial and temporal...

paragraph The niche conservatism hypothesis states that a species’ relationships to habitat and climate conditions are maintained across space and time 1–6 . Niche stationarity is assumed when ecologists estimate species’ habitat needs or transfer findings across geographic regions 7,8 . Recent studies show that some species’ associations with clim...

Motivation: SNAPSHOT USA is an annual, multicontributor camera trap survey of mammals across the United States. The growing SNAPSHOT USA dataset is intended for tracking the spatial and temporal responses of mammal populations to changes in land use, land cover and climate. These data will be useful for exploring the drivers of spatial and temporal...

We collected and screened black rats (Rattus rattus) in Key Largo, Florida, USA, to determine the potential role of disease or parasites in the collapse of the local population. Rats appeared healthy, but 94% (n¼15/16) tested positive for Sarcocystis sp. The partial 18S rRNA gene sequence was 98.7-99.7% similar to a strain of Sarcocystis zuoi that...

Negative interactions among invasive predators, competitors and native species can often disrupt ecosystem services, particularly when keystone species are affected. The Key Largo woodrat (Neotoma floridana smalli) is an endangered ecosystem engineer, endemic to protected hammocks on the northern third of the island of Key Largo, FL, USA. Invasive...

Protected lands are an important source of food, shelter, and reproductive opportunities for wildlife, especially in urban landscapes. When urban development abuts the edges of undisturbed ecosystems, synanthropic species can alter their foraging behaviors and movement to utilize human-supplemented resources throughout the urban- wild interface. Th...

Aim The assembly of species into communities and ecoregions is the result of interacting factors that affect plant and animal distribution and abundance at biogeographic scales. Here, we empirically derive ecoregions for mammals to test whether human disturbance has become more important than climate and habitat resources in structuring communities...

Aim Synthesize literature on genetic structure within species to understand how geographic features and species traits influence past responses to climate change. Location North America. Time Period We synthesized phylogeographic studies from 1978 to 2023, which describe genetic lineages that diverged during the Pleistocene (≥11,700 years ago)....

Site occupancy models (SOMs) are a common tool for studying the spatial ecology of wildlife. When observational data are collected using passive monitoring field methods, including camera traps or autonomous recorders, detections of animals may be temporally autocorrelated, leading to biased estimates and incorrectly quantified uncertainty. We pres...

Endangered species recovery requires knowledge of species abundance, distribution, habitat preferences, and threats. Endangered beach mouse populations (Peromyscus polionotus subspp.) occur on barrier islands in Florida and Alabama. Camera traps may supplement current methods and strengthen inferences of animal activity. Between November 2020-Febru...

SNAPSHOT USA is a multicontributor, long‐term camera trap survey designed to survey mammals across the United States. Participants are recruited through community networks and directly through a website application (https://www.snapshot-usa.org/). The growing Snapshot dataset is useful, for example, for tracking wildlife population responses to lan...

Coastal ecosystems and their endemic taxa are under threat from hurricanes that are increasingly frequent and severe due to climate change—leading to a need to better understand factors associated with species' resistance (capacity to withstand) and resilience (capacity to rebound) to these storms. The beach mouse species complex (Peromyscus polion...

The social system of animals involves a complex interplay between physiology, natural history, and the environment. Long relied upon discrete categorizations of “social” and “solitary” inhibit our capacity to understand species and their interactions with the world around them. Here, we use a globally distributed camera trapping dataset to test the...

The Burmese python (Python bivittatus) is an invasive predator responsible for broad mammal declines in South Florida, United States. Despite their large size, pythons remain cryptic and require multifaceted approaches for detection. We evaluated a novel technique by deploying camera traps at known locations of radiotagged pythons in the Florida Ke...

Although the domestic cat Felis catus is implicated in multiple faunal extinctions and threatens many extant species, there is widespread, well-funded advocacy for desexing unowned cats near human habitation and returning them to site to be fed by volunteers, arguing that this prevents euthanasia, is unlikely to be hazardous to wildlife or a public...

The allometric scaling of predators and their prey is well established within snakes (i.e., gape-width limits maximum prey sizes). However, while some species exhibit ontogenetic shifts to larger prey as they grow, others exhibit telescoping prey selection and continue to consume small prey in addition to larger prey. The Burmese python (Python biv...

Anthropogenic climate change is contributing to an increase in the frequency of extreme weather events. These extreme events may affect interactions in mutualisms that provide key ecosystem functions, especially when the event is rare for a given system and participants are differentially affected. The tropical hardwood hammocks of Key Largo, Flori...

Mass mortality events (MMEs) of wildlife are increasingly frequent and may destabilize communities. MMEs provide a unique ecological context because they simultaneously produce a resource pulse that is sometimes coupled with the loss or severe impairment of functional roles such as predation or herbivory. Moreover, these effects are complicated by...

Raccoon roundworm (Baylisascaris procyonis) negatively affects woodrat (Neotoma spp.) populations but is not known to occur in the endemic range of endangered Key Largo woodrats (Neotoma floridana smalli). Rectal swabs from 23 raccoons (Procyon lotor) in Key Largo were screened for raccoon roundworm by PCR. All tests were negative, suggesting conti...

Ecosystem engineers play a vital role in community assembly by modifying the environment to create novel habitat features. Woodrats (Neotoma sp.) build and maintain intricate stick-nests that stockpile organic materials and create habitat for other small species. The Key Largo woodrat (Neotoma floridana smalli) is an endangered subspecies endemic t...

Free-roaming domestic cats (Felis catus) are known to pose threats to ecosystem health via transmission of zoonotic diseases and predation of native wildlife. Likewise, free-roaming cats are also susceptible to predation or disease transmission from native wildlife. Physical interactions are required for many of these risks to be manifested, necess...

Free-roaming domestic cats (Felis catus) pose numerous risks to biodiversity conservation, especially in island ecosystems. However, the removal of cats is costly, labor-intensive, and often demands more resources than land managers have at their disposal. These costs might be reduced, however, if trapping effort is regularly scaled to match the pr...

Managing wildlife populations in the face of global change requires regular data on the abundance and distribution of wild animals, but acquiring these over appropriate spatial scales in a sustainable way has proven challenging. Here we present the data from Snapshot USA 2020, a second annual national mammal survey of the USA. This project involved...

Protected areas serve an important role in wildlife conservation, yet most wildlife occur outside these areas, subject to varying degrees of human disturbance. In the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, American black bears (Ursus americanus), a highly mobile, opportunistic species, are common despite an extensive outdoor recreation industry with the pote...

Accurate information about the number of cats living outdoors and how they respond to different kinds of management are necessary to quell debates about outdoor cat policy. The DC Cat Count will develop the tools and methodologies needed to realize this possibility and make them available for broader use. This three-year initiative represents a maj...

The absences of large carnivores from many ecosystems, human‐induced landscape changes, and resource supplementation have been theorized to increase the abundance of small carnivore species around the world. Overabundant and/or unconstrained small carnivores can have significant effects on specific prey species that, in some cases, can cascade thro...

Mammalian carnivores are elusive and enigmatic species that often play keystone roles in ecosystems through direct and indirect effects. Growing evidence shows that human activity can impact carnivore behavior and community structure by altering predator-prey interactions, shifting diel activity patterns, and altering wildlife movement. Our goal wa...

Florida is renowned for its non-native reptile communities, with 2 such pervasive non-native species including the apex predator Python bivittatus (Burmese Python) and the herbivorous Iguana iguana (Green Iguana) that showcase the spectrum of their ecological impacts. Both species have recently expanded into the Florida Keys. We used a camera trap...

While museum voucher specimens continue to be the standard for species identifications, biodiversity data are increasingly represented by photographic records from camera traps and amateur naturalists. Some species are easily recognized in these pictures, others are impossible to distinguish. Here we quantify the extent to which 335 terrestrial non...

A pervasive but understudied global change is occurring in the Anthropocene. Wildlife mass mortality events (MMEs) are increasing in frequency causing the abrupt entry of unusually large amounts of carrion into ecosystems, while most vertebrate obligate scavenger species are declining. We hypothesized that behavioral plasticity could still allow ob...

The ecological impact of free-roaming domestic cats (Felis catus) is well-studied. However, despite receiving considerable attention in both the scientific and popular literature, predation behavior is rarely an explicit consideration when developing cat population management plans. We used motion-activated wildlife cameras to document predation ev...

Natural habitats have been converted to urban areas across the globe such that many landscapes now represent matrices of developed and protected lands. As urbanization continues to expand, associated pressures on wildlife will increase, including effects on animals in adjacent protected habitats. For prey species (e.g., ungulates), an understanding...

Increasing availability of anthropogenic food affects biological communities and can alter food webs at the urban interface. Although northern raccoons (Procyon lotor) are known to associate with anthropogenic environments, little research has been conducted examining the differences in raccoon diets across urban-wild gradients. The Florida Keys pr...

Kangaroos (Macropus spp.), koalas (Phascolarctos cinereus), and Tasmanian devils (Sarcophilus harrisii) typically come to mind as the quintessential marsupials. Yet the first scientific description and study of marsupials came from Edward Tyson's dissection of a female Virginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana) brought back to London from Virginia in...

Protected areas remain at the forefront of conservation action plans and are a critical management approach to sustain and restore global biodiversity. In their recent paper, Ferreira et al. (2020) present a compelling case that strict protected areas are essential for the conservation of large and threatened Neotropical mammals in the Brazilian Ce...

Camera trap surveys use infrared-flash camera traps more frequently than white-flash camera traps due to claims that white-flash cameras impact animal behaviour and reduce capture rates. While several studies have examined the impact of white-flash on individual behaviour, few have assessed the effect of flash type on probability of detection. We u...

Many ungulates are spotted as neonates. This trait is unique to individuals, making their identification feasible from remote cameras. Key deer (Odocoileus virginianus clavium) are an endangered subspecies of white-tailed deer endemic to the lower Florida Keys, U.S.A. Habitat loss and hunting were historical drivers of population decline but recent...

Species’ activity patterns are driven by the need to meet basic requirements of food, social interactions, movement, and rest, but often are influenced by a variety of biotic and abiotic factors. We used camera-trap data to describe and compare the activity patterns of the relatively poorly studied tayra (Eira barbara) across 10 populations distrib...

Urbanization is increasing globally, fragmenting habitats and prompting human–wildlife conflict. Urban wildlife research is concurrently expanding, but sampling methods are often biased towards large and intact habitats in public green spaces, neglecting the far more abundant, but degraded, habitats in the urban matrix. Here, we introduce the Five...

Article impact statement: Combining native and non‐native species to evaluate biodiversity is overly simplistic and may undermine the conservation of ecosystems.

Population density is a key parameter in conservation, but remains a challenging metric to obtain for rare and cryptic species. We designed a camera trap array targeting the elusive giant armadillo (Priodontes maximus), estimated densities using spatially explicit capture-recapture models, and compared these with estimates from a previous eight-yea...

Abstract Here we quantify the effects of artisanal fisheries on the ecology of a small cetacean, the Ganges River dolphin (Platanista gangetica gangetica, GRD), in a large river system of Nepal. We examine the size-classes of fisheries’ catches, behavioural changes in GRD in response to fishing activities, and diel overlap between GRD and fishing a...

Urban heat islands affect animal behavior broadly, but their effects on food webs are less understood. In November 2018, camera trap serendipity led to the detection of a red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) preying upon an eastern worm snake (Carphophis amoenus amoenus) in Washington, D.C. – a previously undescribed trophic interaction. While red-t...

Supplemental nests are often used to restore habitats for a variety of rare and endangered taxa. However, though they mimic the function of natural nests, they vary in design and construction material. We know from previous research on human buildings that these differences in architecture can alter the types of microbes to which inhabitants are ex...

Camera traps deployed in grids or stratified random designs are a well‐established survey tool for wildlife but there has been little evaluation of study design parameters. We used an empirical subsampling approach involving 2225 camera deployments run at 41 study areas around the world to evaluate three aspects of camera trap study design (number...

Large mammalian herbivores are experiencing population reductions and range declines. However, we lack regional knowledge of population status for many herbivores, particularly in developing countries. Addressing this knowledge gap is key to implementing tailored conservation strategies for species whose population declines are highly variable acro...

Finding balance between the needs of people and wildlife is an essential component of planning sustainable landscapes. Because mammals make up a diverse and ecologically important taxon with varying responses to human disturbance, we used representative mammal species to examine how alternative land-use policies might affect their habitats and dist...

Tropical understory birds have declined due largely to habitat loss and fragmentation. Here, we revisited a study conducted three decades ago and used artificial nests to examine depredation rates in a Costa Rican biological corridor. Using camera trap data, we compared potential nest predator detection rates at experimental tinamou ground nests in...

Supplemental nests are often used to restore habitats for a variety of rare and endangered taxa. However, though supplemental nests mimic the function of natural nests, they vary in design and building material. We know from previous research on human homes and other buildings that these differences in architecture can alter the types of microbes t...

Exotic predators create novel ecological contexts for native species, particularly when prey exhibit predator naïve behaviors. Population recovery of island endemic species following predator eradication has been documented broadly, but studies examining mammalian prey behavioral responses to exotic predator removal are less common. The Key Largo w...

Worldwide, amphibian populations have been declining rapidly. This decline can be attributed to many factors including climate change, pesticide exposure, and emerging infectious diseases, among other important factors, but few studies have examined the influence of species interactions. In this study, we examined how habitat factors and co-occurri...

Species distribution models (SDMs) are statistical tools used to develop continuous predictions of species occurrence. ‘Integrated SDMs’ (ISDMs) are an elaboration of this approach with potential advantages that allow for the dual use of opportunistically collected presence-only data and site-occupancy data from planned surveys. These models also a...

While the conservation role of remaining natural habitats in anthropogenic landscapes is clear, the degree to which agricultural matrices impose limitations to animal use is not well understood, but vital to assess species’ resilience to land use change. Using an occupancy framework, we evaluated how oil palm plantations affect the occurrence and h...

The endangered Key Largo woodrat (Neotoma floridana smalli) is a packrat. Nights are spent making round trips between nests and distant foraging sites to gather sticks, seeds, and other decorative items to place inside or atop their nests. Interestingly, this stick- nest building behavior appears to be plastic (flexible). Surveys conducted as recen...

These are all the snake predation data from Schalk and Cove (2018)

These are all the lizard predation data from Schalk and Cove (2018)

Understanding the relationships between prey and their predators can provide important insights into evolution of defenses, foraging ecology, and functional roles within their ecosystem. Squamates (lizards and snakes) exhibit a wide range of morphological, ecological and behavioral variation and are model organisms for the study of the evolution of...

The Lower Keys marsh rabbit (Sylvilagus palustris hefneri) is one of many endangered endemic species of the Florida Keys. The main threats are habitat loss and fragmentation from sea‐level rise, development, and habitat succession. Exotic predators such as free‐ranging domestic cats (Felis catus) pose an additional threat to these endangered small...

Camera traps and radiotags commonly are used to estimate animal activity curves. However, little empirical evidence has been provided to validate whether they produce similar results. We compared activity curves from two common camera trapping techniques to those from radiotags with four species that varied substantially in size (~1 kg-~50 kg), die...

Feral and free-ranging domestic cats (Felis catus) can have strong negative effects on small mammals and birds, particularly in island ecosystems. We deployed camera traps to study free-ranging cats in national wildlife refuges and state parks on Big Pine Key and Key Largo in the Florida Keys, USA, and used spatial capture–recapture models to estim...

Aim We test a new species distribution modelling ( SDM ) framework, while comparing results to more common distribution modelling techniques. This framework allows for the combination of presence‐only ( PO ) and presence‐absence ( PA ) data and accounts for imperfect detection and spatial bias in presence data. The new framework tested here is base...

Camera traps are commonly used to study mammal ecology and they occasionally capture previously undocumented species interactions. The key deer (Odocoileus virginianus clavium) is an endangered endemic subspecies of the Florida Keys, where it exists with few predators. We obtained a camera trap sequence of 80 photos in which a key deer interacted w...

Stable isotope data from free-ranging domestic cats and their potential prey in the Florida Keys.

The Great Curassow (Crax rubra) is an endangered species in Costa Rica due to habitat loss and hunting pressure. Little is known about the spatial ecology of cracids and there is a need to assess their distribution to establish efficient conservation strategies. In this study, we integrated camera trapping data with occupancy models to examine land...

Global biodiversity is being lost at catastrophic rates and this figure is substantially worse in island ecosystems and fragmented habitats. Several small mammals, including the Key Largo woodrat (Neotoma floridana smalli), Lower Keys marsh rabbit (Sylvilagus palustris hefneri), and Key Largo cotton mouse (Peromyscus gossypinus allapaticola) are en...

Avian predators are often documented preying upon various herpetofauna, and passerines are no exception. Some families, such as Laniidae (shrikes; Chiu et al. 2011. Herpetol. Notes 4:87–89), possess specialized foraging behaviors (spearing with plant thorns) to subdue insects and small vertebrate prey. However, even dietary generalists such as the...

The Key Largo woodrat (Neotoma floridana smalli) and Key Largo cotton mouse (Peromyscus gossypinus allapaticola) are federally endangered subspecies endemic to the tropical hardwood hammocks of Key Largo, Florida. Woodrats are considered generalists in habitat and diet, yet a steady decline in natural stick nests and capture rates over the past sev...

Mammalian carnivores play an important role in regulating food webs and ecosystems. While many carnivore populations are facing various threats such as habitat loss and fragmentation, poaching, and illegal trade, others have adapted to human-domi- nated landscapes. Information about Neotropical carnivore communities in particular is limited, especi...

With the extirpation of apex predators from many North American systems, coyotes Canis latrans have become the de facto top predator and are ubiquitous members of most ecosystems. Keystone predators aid in maintaining ecosystem function by regulating the mammal community through direct predation and instilling the landscape of fear, yet the value o...

Conservation of the last remaining Ganges River dolphins Platanista gangetica gangetica in Nepal will require robust population estimates and better information on suitable habitat characteristics. To gain a better understanding of these parameters, we conducted boat-based surveys in the 3 major river systems (Karnali, Sapta Koshi, and Narayani) of...

I dentifying species distributions is fundamental to understanding their ecology and guiding conservation and management strategies. We compiled 756 unique range-wide Baird's tapir (Tapirus bairdii) detections via camera trapping of track/sign surveys in eight countries. We then estimated the distribution of suitable tapir habitat within a Maxent-m...

The Snapping Turtle, Chelydra serpentina (Linnaeus 1758), is native to North America, from southeastern Canada, along the southwestern edge of the Rocky Mountains and throughout the eastern United States (Ernst and Lovich 2009). Although C. serpentina has been observed and studied throughout peninsular Florida, it has never been recorded in the Flo...

Ocelots (Leopardus pardalis) and other wild cats are often surveyed using camera traps to identify individuals for density estimation via capture-recapture analyses or estimate occupancy via detection/non-detection analyses. Though attractants are sometimes used in such surveys, there have not been any evaluations of the effectiveness of common vis...

We used camera traps to survey 38 forested sites in the San Juan – La Selva Biological Corridor, northern Costa Rica. From our survey, we obtained photographs of 62 individuals of the Great Currassow (Crax rubra), 34 of which were females. Among those females, we identified two of the three different morphs existing within this species, the dark mo...