Latest research Projects
Snapshot USA
In 2019, Bill McShea, Roland Kays, and I recruited and worked with over 100 scientist collaborators and their students from all 50 states to conduct the first nationwide coordinated camera trap survey. Snapshot USA’s goal is to facilitate the collaboration of cooperators to contribute to a national database of public wildlife data. Once compiled, our first objective is to examine nationwide trends in mammal community assembly rules associated with natural environmental and anthropogenic filters. We hope to grow the participation in order to monitor these trends over time and will address more species-specific and targeted questions in the future. To learn more about Snapshot USA and participate, visit our eMammal page here. In the meantime, you can use the Species Mapper below to look at patterns of species distributions from our 2019 survey data, which will become publicly available in the short-term.
The Crocodile Lake Inventory and Monitoring Project
Despite decades of trapping surveys, no long-term, comparative sampling index for monitoring the endangered Key Largo woodrats (KLWR) and Key Largo cotton mice (KLCM) and their predators has ever been established. We established the Crocodile Lake Inventory and Monitoring Project in collaboration with Jeremy Dixon to refine and establish such a long-term monitoring plan that uses noninvasive techniques to track the distribution of KLWR and KLCM. These monitoring data will be used to track changes in KLWR/KLCM distribution over time and will be the main driver of on-the-ground management actions, such as habitat and population management, as well as the removal of invasive species. Further research, in collaboration with Marcus Lashley and Brandon McDonald, will look at how the invasive black rats are affecting the conservation of the endangered rodents and how their management would facilitate recovery of the endangered rodents.
Costa Rican Mammal Community Dynamics
My ongoing research in Costa Rica has resulted in camera trap data spanning a decade from the San Juan - La Selva Biological Corridor. It's one of the most special places on earth for me and it is also home to many of my favorite animals: jaguars, tapirs, tayras, the list goes on! Many of these animals are quite rare. In all the years that I've been camera trapping, we only recently detected our first jaguar in La Selva in 2018 with my recent REU students Adrian Figueroa and Matthew Willson. We are using these camera trap data from multiple seasons working with all my REU students at La Selva Biological Station to examine the relative roles of rare species, such as tapirs and jaguars, versus common species, such as collared peccaries, in the distribution, abundance, and behavior of a diverse assemblage of other taxa.
Recent Publications
Global review of the effects of small carnivores on threatened species. In: Small carnivores: Evolution, ecology, behavior, and conservation. eds. E. Do Linh San, J. J. Sato, J. L. Belant, and M. J. Somers. Wiley-Blackwell.
Cove, M. V., and A. F. O’Connell. 2020.
Population status, connectivity, and conservation action for Baird’s tapir. Biological Conservation 245: 108501.
Schank, C., M. V. Cove, E. Arima, L. Brandt, E. Brenes-Mora, A. Carver, A. Diaz Pulido, N. Estrada, R. Foster, O. Godinez-Gomez, B. Harmsen, C. A. Jordan, T. Keitt, M. J. Kelly, J. C. Saenz, E. Mendoza, N. Meyer, C. Nielsen, Meyer, N. Meyer, G. Pozo Montuy, E. Naranjo, C. Nielsen, G. O'Farrill, R. Reyna-Hurtado, M. Rivero, J. P. Carvajal Sanchez, M. Singleton, J. A. de la Torre, M. Wood, K. Young, and J. Miller. 2020. PDF
What if trophy hunters didn’t kill their trophies? Conservation Letters 12: e12598.
Cove, M. V. 2019. PDF
Towards recovery of an endangered island endemic: distributional and behavioral responses of Key Largo woodrats associated with exotic predator removal. Biological Conservation 237: 423-429.
Cove, M. V., T. R. Simons, B. Gardner, and A. F. O’Connell. 2019. PDF
Projecting mammal distributions in response to future alternative landscapes in a rapidly transitioning region. Remote Sensing 11(21): 2482.
Cove, M. V., C. Fergus, I. Lacher, T. Akre, and W. J. McShea. 2019. PDF
Previous & Ongoing Research Projects
Small Mammals and Cats
I started working in the Florida Keys in 2012 as part of my dissertation research on the impacts of feral and free-roaming cats on the endangered small mammals of the Florida Keys: Lower Keys marsh rabbits, Key Largo woodrats, and Key Largo cotton mice. This work has resulted in important insights into the management of free-roaming cats and revealed their role in the decline of these species and their effects on the recovery of the small mammals even when habitat restoration is achieved. While many cats were consuming cat food in the environment, we found that many individuals roamed away from homes and developments into the protected areas and may have instilled a landscape of fear for the rabbits and rodents, possibly also killing them without consuming them. These results are largely applicable to other protected areas as fragmentation turns mainland habitats into essential "islands" in the sea of the urban matrix.
Tapirs
Tapirs have inspired me since I cared for them as a zookeeper at the Palm Beach Zoo between 2006-2008. I was able to study them as part of my MS research in the San Juan - La Selva Biological Corridor. Fortunately, that work led me to a great group of collaborators in the form of the IUCN Tapir Specialist Group. Our efforts to pool data across all the countries where Baird's tapirs are endemic has resulted in several impactful reports on their distribution, abundance, and conservation action plans moving forward led by Cody Schank. As we continue to move forward, we hope to gather new data from gaps, formalize recommendations for biological corridors and possibly new protected areas, and collect additional data on genetics and movement of these populations to help restore connectivity across the range of this flagship species.
DC Cat Count and Wildlife Survey
Urban landscapes are a growing land cover feature across the globe. This project is a baseline survey of wildlife occurring within and throughout the green spaces and urban matrix of the nation’s capital, Washington D.C. Our goal is to survey native wildlife communities, as well as exotic species like feral cats, brown rats, and dogs. We will estimate the distributions and abundance of a variety of species and use this information to better understand their roles in the urban ecosystems, interactions with other taxa, and predict future range expansions and contractions as urbanization expands in the 21st century.
Mesopredators in the Midwest
My original MS research began as part of an eastern spotted skunk survey across the Ozarks of Missouri. Those surveys resulted in lots of capture-recapture data of Virginia opossums and raccoons, but alas, no spotted skunks - they are very rare! These data were, however, useful to tease apart how landscape factors versus survey effort influence our ability to detect common mesopredators, but also led to my interest in using camera traps for surveys instead of live-traps. Our resulting Warrensburg-Lee's Summit camera trap surveys of mesopredators were one of the first to integrate camera trap data within an occupancy modeling framework to see how coyotes and urban expansion influenced the rest of the mesopredator guild with interesting results suggesting that coyotes may not fill the role of apex predators in regulating some of the smaller carnivores in absence of wolves and pumas in the Midwestern US.