The study of species coexistence is an important issue in ecology that has been reviewed under different ecological and evolutionary approaches. Knowledge of habitat use of sympatric species is necessary to understand degrees of overlap and interactions intensity. Our main objective was to identify habitat use differences between mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) and cattle (Bos taurus) in the Chihuahuan Desert of Mapimi Biosphere Reserve (MBM), Durango, Mexico. The use of different areas was evaluated through fecal group counts sampled every four months, from March 2010 through November 2011, in 328 fixed plot arranged on eight random transects. Habitat variables such as visibility, slope, altitude, and plant structure were obtained in this transects. For comparisons were applied two-way ANOVA, Kruskall-Wallis and and Mann-Whitney tests; correlations between habitat variables and fecal group counts, and a principal component analysis (PCA), were used to find which variabes influence habitat use. Significant differences were found for both, deer and cattle use between transects, seasons, and between the two species. Deer used higher, stepper areas, with high plant density and low plant richness, while cattle used flat, low areas, with low visibility. The first three components in the PCA explain 72.5% of variance. Deer and cattle differed in the areas they used, showing no competition for spatial resources under present circumstances at MBR.
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.