BULLETIN FLORIDA MUSEUM NATURAL HISTORY VOL. 38, PT. 11(6)


Table 1. Duration of activity and distances traveled per hour and per night of opossums radio-tracked at 1-hour
intervals. All: all nights, >8C: nights with minimum temperatures of more than 80C, N=number of opossum-
nights.


 Distance (m) traveled

 Activity (h) per hour per night

 all >80C all >80C all >80C

Males

Mean 7.86 8.56 234 243 1835 2015
S.D. 2.72 1.91 84.1 81.5 880.8 768.4
Range 0.83-12.0 83-466 100-4665
N 89 69 88 69 88 69

Females

Mean 8.31 9.33 178* 177 1465* 1630
S.D. 2.77 1.56 81.0 76.5 787.6 745.4
Range 0-13.0 60-439 100-3973
N 58 45 54 43 54 43


* One case of inactivity excluded.




 Spatial Organization


 Female opossums lived in fairly well separated and fairly stable home ranges. As
an example of spatial organization, Figure 4 shows female distribution in mid- winter
1987/88. During this period and the second breeding season (April/May) 1987, for
which the data are considered the most complete, 0 to 100% and an average of 43% of
the area of individual female ranges (MCPcorr, n=28) was overlapped by one or more
other female home ranges. On one hand, this figure would be increased by untagged
females living in ranges adjacent to the study area. On the other hand, it overestimates
the actual degree of overlapping use, because the convex polygons do not take into
account spatial or temporal differences in the extent various parts of the home range
are used. Neighboring females often seemed to exploit overlapping areas during
different periods of time, sometimes caused by slight home range shifts, or less
intensively than exclusively used areas. In one case of complete home range overlap,
the individuals were a mother and daughter, and two other cases of complete overlap
involved suspected close relatives. In areas with a presumably greater food abundance,