I employed a combination of vegetative sampling, GIS mapping, and radiotelemetry to examine habitat availability, habitat selection, and movement patterns of the invasive nutria on a freshwater floating marsh at Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve (JLNHPP) in southeastern Louisiana. I found that the floating marsh is both spatially and temporally dynamic at the plant species level. Nutria at this study site had larger home ranges than reported for most other nutria studies. This finding could be attributed to a low to moderate population density, patchy resource distribution, and/or improved telemetry techniques. I evaluated habitat selection at three different scales, or orders of selection; the home range, the location point habitat type, and the individual plant species composition at location points. Nutria did not select habitat at the home range or habitat type level; i.e. they did not select based upon broad-scale habitat characteristics or by dominant plant species. Across all seasons, nutria selected habitats that were significantly different from those available to them at the plant species level. Male and female nutria did not differ significantly in their overall patterns of habitat use and movement. These findings suggest that nutria occupy a spatially and temporally dynamic habitat and that their utilization of this habitat depends heavily upon the individual plant species present at a specific locale
