Recursive movements of eastern wild turkey broods in the southeastern United States

Abstract

AbstractProductivity of wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) populations throughout the southeastern United States has declined over the past several decades. Although population trajectory is driven primarily by annual reproduction, wild turkey managers have little information regarding the behavioral ecology of broods immediately post‐hatch. Broods are known to revisit areas within their ranges, but revisitation behavior is poorly understood spatially and temporally. Thus, identifying patterns of visitation and revisitation can increase understanding of brood behavior. We monitored 94 brooding females until brood failure or 28 days after hatch to evaluate movements and to quantify landcover and vegetation density at revisited locations which we defined as a 100‐m radius circular buffer around each GPS location. Average time between revisitation was 1.05 days (SD = 2.01). Revisited areas were associated with increased proportions of open treeless, pine (Pinus spp.), and pine‐hardwood landcover types and decreased proportions of hardwood forest landcover. Our results indicate that broods frequently revisit areas, presumably due to understory structure that increases available forage and reduces predation risk. However, future research should evaluate recursion and its relationship to habitat selection as it could be driven by development (i.e., aging) of the brood over time.