Seasonal Space Use and Habitat Selection of Adult Raccoons (Procyon Lotor) in a Louisiana Bottomland Hardwood Forest (Report‪)‬

INTRODUCTION The raccoon (Procyon lotor) is a generalist mesopredator whose behavioral and dietary plasticity allows it to exploit a wide variety of habitats. Due in part to human alteration of the landscape and their generalist nature, raccoon populations have experienced dramatic increases since the second half of the last century (Gehrt, 2003). Currently, raccoons are found in nearly every habitat type across North America and their range is expanding (Gehrt, 2003; Lariviere, 2004). Raccoons are often implicated as important nest predators of a variety of ground nesting birds and reptiles, including passerines (Heske et al., 2001; Schmidt, 2003), colonial water-birds (Ellis et al., 2007), game species such as wild turkey and quail (Miller and Leopold, 1992; Rollins and Carrol, 2001), and turtles (Burke et al., 2005). Additionally, raccoons are regionally important furbearers (Chamberlain and Leopold, 2001), and serve as vectors for several diseases that affect humans and domestic animals (Gehrt, 2003; Atwood et al., 2009; Rosatte et al., 2010). Given the potential ecological impacts raccoons may exert on an area, an understanding of the relationships between habitat and raccoon ecology over the wide range of ecosystems they inhabit is important.