Wildlife Initiatives - Rex E. Medlin Jr.

Current Projects:

• Small Mammal Diversity
• Ecological Assessments
• Habitat Change

Habitat Change

Rex is working on his dissertation project at Belize Land Excursions (BLE), focusing on bat community responses to habitat changes at the local and landscape levels. He is surveying BLE with mist nets, harp traps, and acoustic monitoring stations. This work is a part of the ecological assessment of the BLE land holdings being conducted by Bruce and Carolyn Miller of Conservation Management Institute, Virginia Tech University.

At BLE, Rex is concentrating on responses to natural disturbance, largely hurricane impacts, but is also interested in how populations are affected by vegetation distribution, elevation, precipitation, and temperature. He is studying how the animal communities of BLE fit into the greater Belize ecosystem, and has been delighted to find the area to be utilized by many rare and unusual animals. Among the many interesting species Rex has worked with at BLE are Lonchorina aurita and Choeroniscus godmani, a little known species and potentially a new record for Belize.

Rex is also partnering with his dissertation advisor Tom Risch of Arkansas State University on studying the small mammal communities of BLE, targeting the arboreal rodents and mouse opossums, but also including sampling of the rodent and meso-mammal communities.