Abstract Animals exhibit trade‐offs in habitat selection, where they balance selecting habitat characteristics that increase their survival and reproduction while reducing exposure to predation, competition, and disturbance. As the human population continues to grow, understanding how resource selection changes in response to human disturbance is increasingly important for effectively conserving wildlife. Mule deer ( Odocoileus hemionus ) are an important focal species for conservation because of their wide‐ranging movements, habitat requirements, and cultural value. However, in arid environments, where food and water may be especially limited during the hot and dry summer season, limited information exists on how anthropogenic disturbance may affect habitat selection and resource trade‐off across broad and fine spatial scales. Our objectives were to evaluate the resource selection of mule deer in relation to landscape characteristics (plant productivity, water, and topography) and disturbance factors (urbanization and recreation) across multiple temporal (seasonal and daily time periods) and spatial (population second order and home range third order) scales. In addition, we evaluated the functional response of how use of urbanization changed with the amount of urbanization within home ranges of mule deer. We used locations from 37 mule deer collected July 2016–June 2017 in the McDowell Mountains near Phoenix, Arizona, USA, to estimate resource selection using mixed‐effects resource selection functions. At the broad scale of the study area (i.e., second‐order selection), mule deer avoided urbanization but did not appear to increase their use of urbanization during the hot and dry season. At the finer scale within the home range (i.e., third‐order selection), mule deer avoided urbanization but exhibited a weaker negative relationship with urbanization and recreation at night when human activities were lower. Further, mule deer increased their use of urbanization and areas close to trails during the hot and dry season at the third‐order scale. Mule deer also selected areas of high plant productivity across scales and seasons, with the strongest selection occurring during the day. Lastly, mule deer appeared to exhibit a negative functional response during some periods in the hot‐wet and hot‐dry seasons, where they used urbanization less as availability increased. The results from this research suggest that mule deer exhibited trade‐offs between accessing resources and avoiding human disturbance by shifting their habitat use in space and time, which has important management implications for conserving mule deer populations in areas experiencing increased human activities.
Russo et al. (Thu,) studied this question.