American Alligator (Alligator mississippians) Behavioral Ecology on the FGCU Campus

Abstract

Wild animals often travel deeper into urban areas than they realize and find themselves confronted with an environment they do not understand. They may wander into heavily trafficked areas, get hit by cars, get frightened by people, and–if the animal happens to be a bird–fly into glass (Threats to wildlife 2018). The top predator, the American Alligator (Alligator mississippians) is one of the native animals that still call Florida Gulf Coast University its home. The purpose of this research is to better understand how human activity and development affects the behaviors of the American Alligators (Alligator mississippians) at Florida Gulf Coast University. Interactions between humans and alligators have become more frequent, so understanding how human presence and activity changes the detectability of these alligators is important to their long-term management on a human dominated landscape (Kidd-Weaver et al., 2022). This study focused on the ability to track radio-tagged alligators toward a visual sighting and whether this changes with time of day or location on campus.This project built on a previous study where alligators on the FGCU campus were captured, measured and gender identified, radio-tagged, and released. This part of the study focused on the spatial ecology on movements of the American Alligators based on gender. This phase of the study focused on the time of day they can be found and how this varies between more, to less developed parts of the campus.