John A. Litvaitis
Research Interests
- Effects of contemporary land uses on wildlife populations, especially species that are hampered by habitat fragmentation
- Influences of historic land uses on present-day wildlife populations and their habitats
- Understanding and limiting the effects of invasive shrubs on forest wildlife
- Identifying factors that contribute to wildlife-vehicle collisions
Graduate Students
M.S. Students
| Ryan Bechtel | Role of Deer in Plant Invasions |
| Johanna Fickenscher | Insect Community Responses to Invasive Shrubs in Early Successional Habitat |
| Celine Goulet | Multi-scale Assessment of Hognose Snake Habitat |
| James Panaccione | Invasive Shrubs and Early-successional Bird Communities: Are Exotic Shrubs a Limiting Factor on Local Populations? |
| Toni Weidman | Interim Steps to Restore Populations of New England Cottontails |
Alumni |
2005-present |
Thesis Title |
|
| Kelly Boland | 2007 | M.S. | "The Impact of Predation and Hunting on Eastern Cottontail Survival at Cape Cod National Seashore" |
| Jeffrey Tash | 2007 | M.S. | "Status, Distribution and Broad Scale Habitat Features Associated with Remnant Populations of New England Cottontails" |
| Vanessa Johnson | 2005 | M.S. | "Examining the Role of Spatial and Temporal Scale on the Prevalence of Invasive Shrubs in Early-successional Habitats" |
Students Advised |
Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship - Read more....... |
| Darin Franceschini | 2007 - Field investigation of the effects that exotic invasive shrubs have on the suitability of early-successional habitat for song birds. |
| Brendan Clifford | 2004 - A study on the effects of of invasive shrubs on wildlife populations. |
| Elizabeth Baldwin | 2001 - A study on terrestrial habitat use by nesting painted turtles in landscapes with different levels of habitat fragmentation. |
Teaching Responsibilities
| NR 615 | Wildlife Habitats |
| NR 640 | Wildlife Population Ecology |
| NR 740/840 | Inventory and Monitoring of Ecological Communities |
Selected Publications
Barbour, M.S., and J.A. Litvaitis. 1993. Niche dimensions of New England cottontails
in relation to habitat patch size. Oecologia 95:321-327.
Litvaitis, J.A. 1993. Response of early successional vertebrates to historic changes in
land use. Conservation Biology 7:866-873.
Villafuerte R., J.A. Litvaitis, and D.F. Smith. 1997. Physiological responses by lagomorphs
to resource limitations imposed by habitat fragmentation: implications to condition-sensitive predation. Canadian Journal of Zoology 75:148-151.
Litvaitis, J.A. 2000. Chapter 5 - Investigating food habits of terrestrial vertebrates. Pages 165-190 in Research techniques in animal ecology: controversies and consequences. L. Boitani and T.K. Fuller, editors, Columbia University Press, New York, N.Y.
Litvaitis, J.A. 2003. Are pre-Columbian conditions relevant baselines in managed forests of
the northeastern United States? Forest Ecology and Management 185:113-126.
Marchand, M.N., and J.A. Litvaitis. 2004. Effects of habitat features and landscape composition on population structure of a common aquatic turtle in a region undergoing rapid development. Conservation Biology 18:758-767.
Johnson, V.S., J.A. Litvaitis, T.D. Lee, and S.D. Frey. 2006. The role of spatial and temporal scale in colonization and spread of exotic shrubs in early-successional habitats. Forest Ecology and Management 228:124-134.
Litvaitis, J.A., J.P. Tash, and C.L. Stevens. 2006. The rise and fall of bobcats in New Hampshire: relevance of historical harvests to understanding current patterns of distribution and abundance. Biological Conservation 128: 517-528.
Litvaitis, J.A., and J.P. Tash. 2008. An approach toward understanding wildlife-vehicle collisions. Environmental Management 42:688-697.
Education
1984, Ph.D. (Wildlife Management), University of Maine |
1978, M.S. (Wildlife Ecology), Oklahoma State University |
1975, B.S. (Wildlife Management), magna cum laude, University
of New Hampshire |
Selected Service Activities
- University Animal Care and Use Committee
- Member of Editorial Boards of Acta Zoologica Lithuanica and Northeast Naturalist
- Coordinator and host of the 80th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Mammalogists (5 days meeting attend by ~500 scientists, largest meeting ever held at UNH)
- Organizer and host of a two-day conference: Shrublands and early-successional forests of the northeastern United States- critical habitats dependent on disturbance (papers from this meeting were published in a special issue of Forest Ecology and Management)
- Associate Editor of the Journal of Mammalogy
- Editor of Northeast Wildlife
