• Professor, Wildlife Ecology
• Graduate Program Coordinator, Wildlife

Research

Current 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

Detailed Description of Research Projects

Graduate Students / Students Advised

M.S. Students
	Johanna Fickenscher
	Celine Goulet
	James Panaccione
Ph.D Students
Alumni :: 2000-present
	Kelly Boland	December 2007	M.S.
	Jeffrey Tash	September 2007	M.S.
	Vanessa Johnson	December 2005	M.S.
	Michael Marchand	December 2002	M.S.
	Victoria Kjoss	May 2000	M.S.
Undergraduate Students / Advised
Undergraduate Researchers
	Elizabeth Baldwin	Summer 2001
	Brendan Clifford	Summer 2004
	Darin Franceschini	Summer 2007

Primary Teaching Responsibilities

• NR 615: Wildlife Habitats
• NR 737/837: Wildlife Population Dynamics

View Natural Resources undergraduate course descriptions
View Natural Resources graduate course descriptions

Selected Publications

Pulications Since 2000

Litvaitis, J.A. 2000. 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.

Smith, D.F., and J.A. Litvaitis. 2000. Foraging strategies of sympatric lagomorphs: implications for differential success in fragmented landscapes. Canadian Journal of Zoology 78:2134-2141.

Kjoss, V.A., and J.A. Litvaitis. 2001. Comparison of two methods used to sample snake communities in early-successional habitats. Wildlife Society Bulletin 29: 153-157.

Kjoss, V.A., and J.A. Litvaitis. 2001. Community structure of snakes in a human-dominated landscape. Biological Conservation 98:285-292.

Litvaitis, J.A. 2001. Importance of early-successional habitats to mammals in eastern forests. Wildlife Society Bulletin 29:466-473.

Litvaitis, J.A. 2002. New England's cottontail. New Hampshire Wildlife Journal 15 (November/December): 7-11.

Litvaitis, J.A. 2002. Review of The Philosophy and Practice of Wildlife Management - 3rd edition, by Frederick F. Gilbert and Donald G. Dodds. Quarterly Review of Biology 77:344-345.

Maier, T.J., M.N. Marchand, R.M. DeGraaf, and J A. Litvaitis. 2002. A subterranean trigger for photographing predators excavating turtle nests. Herpetological Review 33:284-287.

Marchand, M.N., J.A. Litvaitis, T.J Maier, and R.M. DeGraaf. 2002. Use of artificial nests to investigate predation on nests of freshwater turtles. Wildlife Society Bulletin 30:1092-1098.

Chapman, J.A., and J.A. Litvaitis. 2003. Eastern cottontails and their allies. Pages 101-125 in Wild Mammals of North America: Biology, Management, and Conservation. Edited by G.A. Feldhammer, B.C. Thompson, and J.A. Chapman. John Hopkins Press, Baltimore, MD.

Kovach, A. I., M.K. Litvaitis, and J.A. Litvaitis. 2003. Evaluation of fecal DNA analysis as a method to determine the geographic range of a rare lagomorph. Wildlife Society Bulletin 31:1061-1065.

Litvaitis, J.A. (Guest Editor). 2003. Special issue of Forest Ecology and Management (Volume 185, Number #) on Shrublands and early-successional forests in the northeastern United States.

Litvaitis, J.A. 2003. Shrublands and early-successional forests: critical habitats dependent on disturbance in the northeastern United States. Forest Ecology and Management 185: 1-4.

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.

Litvaitis, J.A., B. Johnson, W, Jakubas, and K. Morris. 2003. Distribution and habitat features associated with remnant populations of New England cottontails in Maine. Canadian Journal of Zoology 81:877-887.

Baldwin, E., M.N. Marchand, and J.A. Litvaitis. 2004. Terrestrial habitat use by nesting painted turtles In landscapes with different levels of habitat fragmentation. Northeastern Naturalist 11:41-48.

Marchand, M.N., and J.A. Litvaitis. 2004. Effects of landscape composition, habitat features, and nest distribution on predation rates of simulated turtle nests. Biological Conservation 117:243-251.

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.

Homyack, J.A., D.J. Harrison, J.A. Litvaitis, and W.B. Krohn. 2006. Quantifying densities of snowshoe hare in Maine using pellet plots. Wildlife Society Bulletin 34:74-80.

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. 2006. Chapter 2: Looking beyond property boundaries - landscape and regional considerations for managing early-successional habitats. Pages 7-13 in Managing grasslands, shrublands, and young forest habitats for wildlife: a guide for the Northeast. J.D. Oehler, D.F. Covell, S. Capel, and B. Long, editors. The Northeast Upland Technical Committee and Massachusetts Division of Wildlife and Fisheries, Westboro, MA.

Litvaitis, J.A., M.S. Barbour, A.L. Brown, A.I. Kovach, J.D. Oehler, B.L. Probert, D.F. Smith, J.P. Tash, R.Villafuerte, and M.K. Litvaitis. 2006. Testing multiple hypotheses to identify the causes of the decline of a lagomorph species: the New England cottontail as a case study. in Biology of lagomorphs - evolution, ecology and conservation. P. Alves and K. Hackländer, editors. Springer-Verlag, New York, NY.

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., J.P. Tash, M.K. Litvaitis, M.N. Marchand, A.I. Kovach, and R. Jenkins. 2006. A range-wide survey to determine the current distribution of New England cottontails. Wildlife Society Bulletin 34: In press.

Education

Selected Service Activities

• University Animal Care and Use Committee
• College Academic Affairs 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