Fall and Winter Distribution of Mammals at the Kalamazoo Nature Center

Abstract

In this study the first problem was to find what mammals were present. There are lists of mammals for county, state, and regional levels, but these are not necessarily accurate for the fauna of any particular area within these levels. Mammals are generally restricted to a particular habitat which, therefore must be present for the mammal to occur. However, the presence of the habitat is no guarantee that the particular mammal will appear. Therefore, it is necessary to discover what species are present in each particular area. Once the species present are determined, the objective becomes one of learning their distribution. This work concentrates on the relationship of the mammals to the habitats and several ideas were analyzed in considering this relationship.