Dr. Michael Tewes, Regents Professor in wildlife science at Texas A&M University-Kingsville, was recently honored along with his collaborators with the George Miksch Sutton Award in Conservation Research for a written research work. The winning paper was entitled Habitat Partitioning by Sympatric Ocelots and Bobcats: Implications for Recovery of Ocelots in Southern Texas, and his collaborators on the paper are all his former students.

The award from the Southwestern Association of Naturalists recognizes an outstanding paper related to conservation published in The Southwestern Naturalist, a journal of the Southwestern Association of Naturalists.

Tewes worked on the project with his three former students, Dr. Jon Horne, senior author and research scientist in the wildlife department at the University of Idaho; Dr. Aaron Haines, assistant professor in the biology department at Upper Iowa University; and Linda Laack, biologist with the Environmental Defense Fund in Austin.

The winning paper describes how bobcats and ocelots partition habitat at the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge in South Texas. Ocelots and bobcats were trapped and were fitted with radio transmitters. The researchers then tracked the animals and observed habitat use over a 16-month period. The observations indicated the animals utilized habitat in a way that reduces the competition between the species. Understanding habitat preferences is an important step in conservation of the ocelot, which is listed under the Endangered Species Act.

The group is an international association of scientists, educators and students, founded in 1953 to promote the field study of plants and animals (living and fossil) in the southwestern United States, Mexico and Central America.