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Thesis (M.S.)--Montana State University--Bozeman, 2007. / Typescript. Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Robert A. Garrott. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 57-63).

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2002. / Title from title page screen (viewed Feb. 26, 2003). Thesis advisor: Louis J. Gross. Document formatted into pages (vii, 82 p. : ill. (some col.)). Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 66-72).

In recent years ideas about connectivity have become increasingly influential in theories pertaining to wildlife conservation. These ideas range from concerns with spatial habitat linkages or species' movements, to the forms of connection existing between 'people' and 'nature'. This thesis is concerned with how these various forms of connectivity are enacted in wildlife conservation through varied spatial practices. Following Mol (2002), I suggest that these modes of connectivity are enacted not separately but as a multiple. Indeed, through tracing how connectivity is enacted in a series of conservation situations relating to woodland mammals in England and Wales (red squirrels, pine martens, and wild/feral boar), I suggest that these multiple spatial practices of connectivity shape the biopolitical possibilities for living with non-human life. Since the connectivity multiple is composed, following Latour (2010) I further argue that it can be recomposed. Thus, I make the normative suggestion that contemporary trends in conservation policy (towards larger-scale action, process-based objectives, and neoliberal modes of governance) might be rethought and differently articulated through a conceptual and practical approach I term <strong>revitalizing conservation</strong>. This thesis thus makes several important contributions to geographic literatures. Following a widespread (re)affirmation of nonhuman agency in social science (e.g. Latour, 2005; Callon et al, 2009; Braun &amp; Whatmore, 2010), and particularly the agential capacities of animals (Wolch &amp; Emel, 1998; Philo &amp; Wilbert, 2000), it foregrounds the role of woodland mammals in enacting connectivity through developing the concept of animal mobilities. Furthermore, it engages with existing work tracing affirmative possibilities for conservation (bio)politics (Whatmore, 2002; Lulka, 2009; Hinchliffe et al, 2005; Hinchliffe, 2008; J.Lorimer, 2010, 2012, 2015), by illuminating the intersection of spatial practices of connectivity, and the potential these offer for alternative modes of 'living with' more-than-human lives.

This thesis argues that humans and ospreys in Scotland are materially, bodily and ethically involved with one another. It follows that a separate human or osprey history of species conservation is inadequate. Focused primarily through the entwined experiences of birds and people on Speyside, I examine the unfolding of osprey-human relationships with particular attention to the agency and capacities of nonhuman animals as animals: with geographies and lives of their own. Drawing on the scholarship of Tim Ingold, Giles Deleuze and Donna Haraway, I consider the dwelling, the co-becoming, and the zones of attachment between human and osprey subjects. At the heart of this project has been an investigation of the relationship between the historical and geographical conditions within which osprey life has flourished on its return from extinction in Scotland, and the possibilities for osprey nature that emerge from such conditions. I offer a ‘site ontology’ of osprey involvements, each ‘site’ comprising a material, bodily and ethical event of agency, subjectivity and composition. Often running in parallel to each other, such sites emphasise differentiations of osprey life: their situation within the militarised biopolitics of bird protection and ‘Operation Osprey’; negotiations of avian-human proximity and distances; their nesting geographies amidst the experimental attempts to restore a diminished community to its former range; and the nature of avian existence emerging in the wake of a return from extinction. Drawing on an array of archival material – occasionally supplemented with oral history, avian science and encounters in the field – the thesis proposes a lively historical geography of animal involvement.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 169-181).

Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of St Andrews, May 2007.

Tests of optimal foraging theory have shown that many predators are selective about which prey and which patches should be utilized. I hypothesize that prey species "exploit" this choosiness by evolving characteristics that cause predators to choose alternate prey. Specifically, prey should evolve traits that increase the probability of predator death, decrease the per prey or per patch nutritional intake, increase processing time, and advertise (or mimic advertisements of) undesirable traits. Predator choosiness allows prey to divert the predator instead of defeating it. The evolution of a long-term, prudent foraging strategy requires that three conditions be met: (1) The forager must use resources from a discrete subpopulation; (2) use of that subpopulation must be relatively exclusive; (3) the resource population must respond in such a way that a long-term strategy provides an economic advantage. For the horned lizard-ant system, conditions (1) and (2) were tested by tagging lizards with transmitters or radioactive tags. Horned lizards occupy home ranges much smaller than would be expected if they moved at random and home range overlap was less than expected by random placement of home ranges, thus conditions (1) and (2) were not rejected. Most techniques of home range study do not distinguish random from nonrandom movement. Condition (3) was tested by subjecting ant colonies to various levels of artificial predation. In none of five experiments was the result obtained that an increased harvest intensity led to a decrease in long-term yield; condition (3) is tentatively rejected. Ant colonies shut down in response to predation; this puts a ceiling on their losses. Short-term foraging models were tested for horned lizards foraging at ant colonies. A prediction of the marginal value theorem was not rejected: Horned lizards tended to leave colonies when their instantaneous rate of harvest at that colony had fallen to their average rate of harvest for the day. Another short-term prediction, however, was rejected: Lizards did not stay longer at the "better" of two colonies. A more liberal version of the same prediction was not rejected. Apparently, horned lizards forage adaptively but not optimally.

Title from title page of PDF (University of Missouri--St. Louis, viewed February 10, 2010). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 92-99). Also available on the Internet.