Journal of Threatened Taxa |
www.threatenedtaxa.org | 26 May 2021 | 13(6): 18660–18662
ISSN 0974-7907 (Online) | ISSN 0974-7893
(Print)
https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.6642.13.6.18660-18662
#6642 | Received 31 August 2020 | Final
received 16 April 2021 | Finally
accepted 30 April 2021
Mating behavior
of Eastern Spotted Skunk Spilogale putorius
Linnaeus, 1758 (Mammalia: Carnivora: Mephitidae)
revealed by camera trap in Texas, USA
Alexandra C. Avrin
1, Charles E.Pekins 2 &
Maximillian L. Allen 3
1,3 Department of Natural Resources
and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois, 1102 S. Goodwin, Urbana, IL
61801, U.S.A.
2 Fort Hood Natural Resources
Management Branch, United States Army Garrison, 1939 Rod & Gun Club Loop,
Fort Hood, TX 76544
3 Illinois Natural History Survey,
University of Illinois, 1816 S. Oak Street, Champaign, IL 61820, U.S.A.
1 aavrin@illinois.edu
(corresponding author), 2 charles.e.pekins.civ@mail.mil, 3 maxallen@illinois.edu
Editor: Giovanni Amori,
CNR-Research Institute on Terrestrial Ecosystems, Rome, Italy. Date
of publication: 26 May 2021 (online & print)
Citation: Avrin,
A.C., C. Pekins & M.L. Allen (2021). Mating behavior of Eastern Spotted Skunk Spilogale
putorius Linnaeus, 1758 (Mammalia: Carnivora: Mephitidae)
revealed by camera trap in Texas, USA. Journal of Threatened Taxa 13(6): 18660–18662. https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.5957.13.6.18660-18662
Copyright: © Avrin
et al. 2021. Creative Commons Attribution
4.0 International License. JoTT allows unrestricted use, reproduction, and
distribution of this article in any medium by providing adequate credit to the
author(s) and the source of publication.
Funding: Fort Hood Directorate of Public Works; USA Army
Corps of
Engineers-Engineering Research and Development Center.
Competing interests: The authors
declare no competing interests.
Acknowledgements: We thank P. Wolff, J. Sperry, M.
Ward, and Illinois Natural History Survey for logistical support. We thank Fort Hood Natural Resources
Management Branch for support and funding.
Eastern Spotted Skunks Spilogale putorius are an understudied small
carnivore listed as ‘Vulnerable’ by the International Union for Conservation of
Nature (IUCN Red List; Gompper & Jachowski 2016), and Vulnerable or Imperiled
in most states across their range (Trani et al.
2007). Prairie Spotted Skunks Spilogale putorius interrupta
are listed as a Species of Concern by the United States Fish and Wildlife
Services (USFWS; USFWS 2012). Eastern
Spotted Skunks were a common furbearer species throughout the eastern and
midwestern United States (Kinlaw 1995; Sasse 2017; Eng & Jachowski 2019), before suffering a notable range-wide
decline in the mid-1900s (Gompper & Hacket 2005). The
cause of this decline and factors shaping their current distribution are not
well understood, although overexploitation, habitat loss, and pesticides likely
contributed (Thorne et al. 2017; Eng & Jachowski 2019). As
a result, current research has primarily focused on quantifying abundance,
occupancy, and habitat relationships (Lesmeister et
al. 2009; Thorne et al. 2017; Perry et al. 2018; Eng
& Jachowski 2019), and determining effective
methods of detection which is often as low as 1.6 or 2.8 detections/100 camera
trap nights (Hackett et al. 2007; Eng & Jachowski 2019).
Minimal focus has been on
studying the demographics or mating behavior of
Eastern Spotted Skunks compared to areas such as habitat preferences and
distribution, possibly due to the overshadowing knowledge gaps in these
areas. Yet, demographic and mating behavioral information is crucial for effective management
and conservation and should be a focal point for species of concern. For most solitary carnivores such as skunks,
the distribution of females determines the distribution of males during the
mating season (Sandell 1989), and male Eastern
Spotted Skunk home range size grows substantially during mating season
suggesting questing behavior (Lesmeister
et al. 2009), although no study has directly examined this. The only detailed demographic study with
cause specific mortality for Eastern Spotted Skunks found a low mean annual
survival of 0.354 (95% CI= 0.339–0.368) with similar estimates across age and
sex categories (Lesmeister et al. 2010). Two studies monitoring Eastern Spotted Skunk
den sites documented food provisioning by females to juveniles, demonstrating
parental care and providing information about prey selection (mainly
herpetofauna and small mammals in these studies, Sprayberry & Edelman 2016;
Thorne & Waggy 2017). Like other solitary carnivores, male Eastern
Spotted Skunks likely mate with many females during a mating season and do not
remain with any female or contribute to offspring care (Sandell
1989). Other similar studies focused
primarily on den site selection which is important for adult survival as well
as the care and protection of offspring.
Sprayberry & Edelman (2018) found that in forests, Eastern Spotted
Skunks preferred to den in dense vegetation with ample understory, likely for
protection from predators. Contrarily,
Harris et al. (2020) found that in dry prairies, den site characteristics were
more important than habitat characteristics and breeding females preferred
small mammal burrows. To our knowledge,
no studies have been published on Eastern Spotted Skunk mating or communication
behaviors.
We used camera traps to monitor wildlife
at Fort Hood, an Army installation in central Texas, USA. Fort Hood is a de-facto bioreserve with
diverse habitats, protected from surrounding development (Hayden 2014). The Eastern Spotted Skunk population decline
is likely due in part to habitat loss, making such bioreserves likely important
refugia for the species (Gompper & Hackett
2005). We set 20 Reconyx
(Hyperfire and Ultrafire; Reconyx Inc., Holmen, Wisconsin USA) camera traps 500m
apart in each of seven grids (n= 140 camera trap locations, we moved cameras
every five weeks) between December 2019 and May 2020 as part of a larger
wildlife monitoring project aimed at understanding carnivore community
structure (full details in Avrin et al. In
Press). We programmed camera traps to
take 10 photos each time the motion sensor was triggered with no delay between
triggers. We took a total of 180,562
photos over 4,908 trap nights, including 2,224 independent capture events of
carnivores and 56 independent capture events of Eastern Spotted Skunks (minimum
time between independent captures= 30 minutes).
On 15 April 2020 at 04.57h one of
our cameras captured images of two Eastern Spotted Skunks mating (Figure
1). The skunks were in front of the
camera for six minutes, producing 200 images (Supplementary Material 1
<https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.14650320.v1>). The male appeared to follow the female before
wrestling on top of her at 04.59h and biting her nape. They mated for approximately two minutes, the
male maintained a hold on the female’s nape intermittently throughout. The mating was very active, and the pair
appeared to be wrestling during much of the time. The female ran off towards the east once the
male let go and the male departed towards the south.
This observation adds to the minimal
natural history knowledge of Eastern Spotted Skunks by providing insight into
their mating behavior. Similar mating behavior,
including the male biting the female while they wrestle, has been documented in
Polecats Mustela putorius (Blandford
1987) and captive Pygmy Spotted Skunks Spilogale
pygmaea, though these species exhibited longer
mating durations (18 minutes–1 hour) than we documented. The captive spotted skunks had low conception
and parturition success (1 out of 9 pairings produced live offspring; Teska et al. 1981) and it is unknown if wild spotted skunks
have greater success. Eastern Spotted
Skunks mate during March and April (Kinlaw 1995)
similar to other carnivores with defined breeding seasons in North
America. Although we found no research
on how Eastern Spotted Skunks find mates, most other solitary carnivores use
scent marking to find and select mates (Allen et al. 2015, Kean et al.
2011). It is possible Eastern Spotted
Skunks share these and other behavioral and
demographic traits with other carnivores, but further research is needed to
understand how they find and select mates, their reproductive success, and
other aspects that affect the fecundity of wild populations. As a species of concern across its range,
such information could prove crucial to conservation and management efforts.
Our detection of Eastern Spotted
Skunks mating highlights the utility of camera traps for documenting rarely observed behaviors
while monitoring wildlife (Caravaggi et al.
2020). Depending on the study design,
remote recording may allow for documentation of rarely exhibited behaviors unbiased by human presence (Pesendorfer
et al. 2018; Farías-González & Vega-Flores 2019; Caravaggi et al. 2020).
Adjusting camera settings (i.e., increasing the number of pictures taken
per trigger, decreasing lag times between triggers, or taking videos) can
further improve the likelihood of capturing behaviors. We encourage researchers to publish such
documentation of rare or novel behaviors as they add
to the collective knowledge and inspire more in-depth future research.
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