Wildlife researchers are beginning to understand that a diversity of migratory tactics may sustain mule deer herd productivity, particularly when strategies are exposed to intermittently poor environmental conditions (i.e., severe winters, summer drought). Annual shifts in relative benefits of migration strategies—often described as the fitness-balancing hypothesis—may be key to minimizing dramatic population fluctuations that are challenging for managers and biologists to predict and adapt to.
Researchers at the University of Wyoming, Including PhD candidate Anna Ortega, are studying a diversity of migratory strategies in a partially migratory herd of mule deer sharing a common winter range in the Red Desert of south-central Wyoming.