Over the past century, the number of Greater Sage-Grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) have steadily decreased due to a variety of causes, including habitat loss and fragmentation. Past studies have shown that resource (food) availability for females and juveniles during the nesting and brood-rearing period is important to understand. For instance, access to insect protein is directly linked to survival and body condition of chicks, but it is unknown if hens select nesting and brood-rearing locations in response to insect density. Ant mounds are common in sagebrush landscapes and can be used to estimate insect density. The objective of this study was to determine if ant mound density influenced the locations in which hens brooded and nested. In the south-central Pahsimeroi Valley of Idaho, we measured the density of ant mounds along 50 meter transects that were centered on nest sites, females with broods, and females without broods. All statistics were then processed in R.
Results/Conclusions
We documented ant mound densities around 29 nest sites, 46 brooding locations with chicks, and 47 post-nesting locations for hens without chicks. In general, a higher proportion of nest sites had ant mounds compared to brood sites. Nest sites averaged two ant mounds per transect with 34% of locations having one or more ant mounds present. Brood-rearing locations averaged 1.2 ant mounds with 26% of locations having one or more mounds present, and post-nesting locations of hens without broods averaged 1.9 ant mounds per transect with 27% of all locations sampled having one or more ant mounds present. Further research with larger sample sizes is warranted to more rigorously examine the relationships between ant mound density, overall insect density and hen habitat preference.