John A. Litvaitis

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
NH Bobcat Project

Education

  • 1984 Ph.D. (Wildlife Management), University of Maine
  • 1978 M.S. (Wildlife Ecology), Oklahoma State University
  • 1975 B.S. (Wildlife Management), magna cum laude, University of New Hampshire

Teaching Responsibilities

  • NR 640: Wildlife Population Ecology
  • NR 740/840: Inventory and Monitoring of Ecological Communities
  • NR 741/841: Demographic Methods in Conservation Biology and Wildlife Ecology

John Litvaitis

Professor,
Wildlife Ecology

john@unh.edu
603-862-2094

Selected Publications

Barbour, M.S., and J.A. Litvaitis.  1993.  Niche dimensions of New England cottontails in relation to habitat patch size.  Oecologia 95:321-327.

Litvaitis, J.A.  1993.  Response of early successional vertebrates to historic changes in land use.  Conservation Biology 7:866-873.

Villafuerte R., J.A. Litvaitis, and D.F. Smith.  1997.  Physiological responses by lagomorphs to resource limitations imposed by habitat fragmentation: implications to condition-sensitive predation.  Canadian Journal of Zoology 75:148-151.

Litvaitis, J.A.  2000.  Chapter 5 - 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.

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. 

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.

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., 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., and J.P. Tash.  2008.  An approach toward understanding wildlife-vehicle collisions.  Environmental Management 42:688-697.

 Selected Service Activities

  • University Animal Care and Use 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