Conner Ties
Conner Ties, pursuing a master’s in rangeland, wildlife and fisheries management, seeks to advance the conservation and management of two native wildlife species that have historically not been subject to abundant academic study — the swift fox and collared peccary.
Ties said Texas mammals face numerous challenges including urban development, habitat change and invasive species, among others.
“Considering these threats, understanding a species' current and potential spatial distribution is a crucial first step in conservation planning,” Ties said.
Swift foxes have experienced an overall reduction in their native range, which spans throughout the Great Plains from New Mexico into Canada. In Texas, swift foxes are facing extirpation.
“Swift foxes once ranged throughout 79 counties in Texas, but due to habitat loss and intraguild predation, their contemporary range has been reduced to only two counties in the northeastern Panhandle,” he said.
Using two types of ecological niche models — a species distribution model and a habitat suitability model — Ties will work to identify suitable habitats for swift foxes across the Panhandle region.
Another aspect of his research is focused on identifying the biotic and abiotic factors that impact collared peccary distribution.
“Historically, collared peccaries were distributed throughout central, southern and western Texas, but current populations occur in the southwestern third of Texas,” Ties said. “Despite their relatively widespread distribution and importance as a game animal, prey item and seed disperser, little scholarly work has been done on the species in the state.”
This work will focus on the South Texas Plains and Trans-Pecos ecoregions and utilize maximum entropy species distribution models and presence-only occurrences from iNaturalist.
“We will develop a species distribution model for the South Texas Plains and Trans-Pecos and assess the transferability of ecoregion-specific models to predict distribution in the other ecoregions,” Ties said. “This will allow us to assess habitat generality versus specificity. To date, using data from iNaturalist, we will model 701 observations for the South Texas Plains and 760 detections for the Trans-Pecos.”
The results of Ties’ work will provide wildlife managers with spatially explicit tools and distribution maps to restore, manage and protect peccary habitat. Additionally, the data can also assist with setting ecoregion-specific hunting seasons and bag limits.
