King Rail (Rallus elegans) presence in the Midwestern United States is predicted by local‐scale factors and avian community

Abstract

Abstract The King Rail (Rallus elegans) is a wetland dependent species of conservation concern. Our objective was to gain a better understanding of the breeding habitat associations of King Rails in the Midwestern United States and the relationship of this species to other obligate marsh birds using occupancy and MaxEnt models. To collect data pertaining to occupancy, we placed trail cameras at 50 random points in coastal wetlands in the western Lake Erie basin where calls of King Rails were continuously broadcast at night. Data pertaining to other marsh bird species were collected via call‐broadcast surveys and camera surveys at each sample point. For MaxEnt modeling, we obtained presence data for King Rails and other obligate marsh birds from eBird and habitat data from GIS databases. Trail cameras and call‐broadcast surveys captured 10 detections of King Rails at nine sites, an 18% naive occupancy rate. King Rail occupancy was positively related to amount of interspersion, average water depth, and percent cover of emergent vegetation at local scales within a 5‐m radius. Our MaxEnt models indicated that, at a broader scale, the presence of other rail species such as the Sora (Porzana carolina) may be more important for predicting King Rail presence than other marsh birds or coarse wetland categories such as “emergent vegetation.” Our results could help wetland managers to predict where King Rails occur and to adapt management plans to incorporate King Rail conservation.

Keywords

• emergent vegetation
• marsh bird communities
• MaxEnt
• occupancy modeling
• rails
• wetland communities