Wildlife documented at nine-banded armadillo burrows in Arkansas

The Nine-banded Armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus) is a widespread burrowing species with an expanding geographic range across the southeastern and midwestern United States. Armadillos dig numerous, large burrows within their home ranges and these burrows are likely used by a diverse suite of wildlife species as has been reported for other burrowing ecosystem engineers such as Gopher Tortoises (Gopherus polyphemus), Desert Tortoises (Gopherus agassizi), and Black-tailed Prairie Dogs (Cynomys ludovicianus). We used motion-triggered game cameras at 35 armadillo burrows in 4 ecoregions of Arkansas and documented 19 species of mammals, 4 species of reptile, 1 species of amphibian, and 40 species of bird interacting with burrows. Bobcat (Lynx rufus), Coyote (Canis latrans), Eastern Cottontail (Sylvilagus floridanus), Gray Fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus), Gray Squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis), Northern Raccoon (Procyon lotor), Virginia Opossum (Didelphis virginiana), and unidentified rodents (mic..., Beginning in March 2020, we located burrows by walking the sites and opportunistically encountering burrows. We selected burrows where we felt cameras would not attract attention from hikers or recreators and where the field of view of the burrow was relatively unobstructed by vegetation. At selected burrows we set motion-triggered wildlife cameras. We used several types of cameras for this study (Reconyx Microfire, Bushnell HD Aggressor, Bushnell Core, and Browning Strike Force HD). All cameras were set to take a burst of 3 photos each time they were triggered and to have a reset period between 0 and 8 seconds (depending on the available options of the camera model) before triggering again. Cameras were placed on nearby trees or tripods placed between 2 and 3 m from the burrow entrance. Cameras were set approximately 50-75 cm off the ground and angled towards the burrow entrance to ensure we captured all wildlife interacting with the burrows. The amount of time that individual cameras ..., For additional details about this dataset, please use the following ReadMe.txt file.