Development of a Mammal Hair Identification Guide for Common Species in New York

Identifying mammals by hair characteristics is valuable for wildlife management applications, law enforcement, and regulation of international treaties. Researchers use hair identification in scat-and gastrointestinal-based diet studies, genetic-based hair-snare collections, and monitoring trade of rare and protected species. No accessible mammalian hair identification key exists for New York or other northeastern states. Identification keys are beneficial for researchers, wildlife managers and interested members of the general public that attempt to identify specific taxa. We created a guard-hair identification key for common mammalian species in New York State. This key was needed to identify diet components during a suburban coyote study. We collected hair samples of common mammal species in New York from private fur collections, road-killed specimens, and museum archives. Hair samples were characterized using 10 categorical variables. We then used single-fusion, hierarchical cluster analysis (Program JMP 7.0) to rapidly facilitate the identification of unique patterns, similarities, and dissimilarities of the hair characteristics. This statistical-based analysis produced a dendrogram that was used as a road map for the structural organization of the hair key. JMP\u27s dynamical interface allowed us to select specific branches of the dendrogram, thus highlighting the observations in the data table, and quickly identifying the important characteristics that differentiated mammal groupings and subsets. This is a new application of a multivariate technique, hierarchical cluster analysis, to rapidly develop a mammalian guard-hair identification key. This method could be used to develop locally-customized identification keys for wildlife damage research and management