Thesis (M.A.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of History.

Coyotes (Canis latrans) prey upon domestic sheep. The Animal Damage Control (ADC) program currently relies heavily on aerial gunning in winter to control coyote depredations on mountain grazing allotments. Some people claim that winter aerial gunning is not effective because coyotes migrate to lower elevations during winter, following herds of big game animals, and may not be on the allotments where summer depredations occur. I studied the seasonal movement patterns of coyotes in the Bear River Range of Utah and Idaho to determine if coyotes in montane habitats move on a seasonal basis. Radio-collared coyotes were located from fixed-wing aircraft from 13 November 1987 to 15 September 1989. I used 3 parameters to assess interseasonal movement patterns: overlap in seasonal home ranges, distance between harmonic mean centers of activity, and seasonal differences in mean elevation. All mature coyotes showed overlapping seasonal home ranges, which suggests they did not move substantially between seasons. In contrast, none of the sub-adult coyotes had seasonal home ranges that overlapped. Distances between harmonic centers of seasonal activity were easily assigned to one of two groups (≤5000 m and ≤10,000 m). These corresponded precisely with coyotes that did and did not display overlap in seasonal home ranges. Significant changes in the elevations of seasonal locations were not evident for any age or sex group. I conclude (1) that movement of sub-adult coyotes in the Bear River Range is part of dispersal behavior and is not motivated by seasonal change and (2) that these sub-adult coyotes generally cease wandering during their second years. My findings are similar to other studies where nomadic wandering was more common among sub-adult coyotes and was not correlated with season. I saw no movement of coyotes from the mountains to valley locations. Adult coyotes were in the same location in summer as in winter.

An analysis of the relative abundance of the prevalent species in 25 major plant communities of the Wasatch Mountains demonstrates that variation in species diversity is significantly correlated with many floral characteristics. Wind pollinated flowers decrease in abundance while animal pollinated flowers increase along the diversity gradient. Both relationships are highly significant statistically. Color diversity and species diversity are significantly and positively correlated in open communities but are not correlated in forest communities. The percent sum frequency of yellow and pink-magenta flowers decreased with increasing species diversity while blue and whitish flowers increased. Also, zygomorphic flowers and flowers in which access to the nectar supply is restricted by morphological barriers are positively correlated with species diversity. It is shown that wind pollinated flowers and entomophilous open flowers are significantly more abundant than animal pollinated flowers whose nectaries are morphologically restricted, Theoretical explanations are offered for these relationships.

The timing of motion on thrust faults in the Idaho-Wyoming-Utah (IWU) thrust belt comes from synorogenic sediments, apatite thermochronology and direct dating of fault rocks coupled with good geometrical constraints of the subsurface structure. The thermal history comes from the analyses of apatite thermochronology, thermal maturation of hydrocarbon source rocks and isotope analysis of fluid inclusions from syntectonic veins. New information from zircon fission track and zircon (U-Th)/He analysis provide constraints on the thermal evolution of the IWU thrust belt over geological time. These analyses demonstrate that the time-temperature pathway of the rocks sampled never reached the required conditions to reset the thermochronometers necessary to provide new timing constraints. Previous thermal constraints for maximum temperatures of IWU thrust belt rocks, place the lower limit at ~110°C and the upper limit at ~328°C. New zircon fission track results suggest an upper limit at ~180°C for million year time scales. ID-TIMS and LA-ICPMS of syntectonic calcite veins suggest that new techniques for dating times of active deformation are viable given that radiogenic isotope concentrations occur at sufficient levels within the vein material.