Brendan Hayes
X6775
Bhayes13@mailbox.stlawu.edu
Advisor: Dr. Erica Barthelmess
Preferred format: poster

Habitat destruction and fragmentation are some of the most obvious and prevalent forms of human impact on the environment.  These visually distinct disturbances often correlate with declines in prominent large species that require conditions that have changed.  Such conditions might be the amount of rangeland available, vegetation, three dimensional habitat, and or access to food and water.  The loss of these organisms from the community is often pronounced and creates attention for the problem at hand.  However, farther down the trophic scale are whole host of community members that are impacted by fragmentation.  For example small mammals communities are often overlooked when assessing the impact of land development.  These organisms are invaluable to the health and existence of higher trophic community members.  Our research compared diversity and community structure of small mammal populations in five fragmented study sites and five corresponding unfragmented study sites.  Trapping was conducted from June to August 2001 on the Kip Tract and the St. Lawrence golf course; community characteristics were elucidated from this data.