Human avoidance, selection for darkness and prey activity explain wolf diel activity in a highly cultivated landscape

IF 1.7 3区生物学 Q3 ECOLOGY

Wildlife Biology Pub Date : 2024-05-15 DOI:10.1002/wlb3.01251

Peter Sunde, Sofie A. Kjeldgaard, R. M. Mortensen, Kent Olsen

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Wildlife that share habitats with humans with limited options for spatial avoidance must either tolerate frequent human encounters or concentrate their activity into those periods with the least risk of encountering people. Based on 5259 camera trap images of adult wolves from eight territories, we analyzed the extent to which diel activity patterns in a highly cultivated landscape with extensive public access (Denmark) could be explained from diel variation in darkness, human activity, and prey (deer) activity. A resource selection function that contrasted every camera observation (use) with 24 alternative hourly observations from the same day (availability), revealed that diel activity correlated with all three factors simultaneously with human activity having the strongest effect (negative), followed by darkness (positive) and deer activity (positive). A model incorporating these three effects had lower parsimony and classified use and availability observations just as well as a ‘circadian' model that smoothed the use‐availability ratio as function of time of the day. Most of the selection for darkness was explained by variation in human activity, supporting the notion that nocturnality (proportion of observations registered at night vs. day at the equinox) is a proxy for temporal human avoidance. Contrary to our expectations, wolves were no more nocturnal in territories with unrestricted public access than in territories where public access was restricted to roads, possibly because wolves in all territories had few possibilities to walk more than few hundred meters without crossing roads. Overall, Danish wolf packs were 6.5 (95% CI: 4.6–9.6) times more active at night than at daylight, which make them amongst the most nocturnally active wolves reported so far. These results confirm the prediction that wolves in habitats with limited options for spatial human avoidance, invest more in temporal avoidance.

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人类的回避、对黑暗的选择和猎物的活动解释了狼在一片高度开垦的土地上的昼夜活动

野生动物与人类共享栖息地，但其空间回避选择有限，它们必须忍受与人类的频繁相遇，或者将活动集中在与人类相遇风险最小的时段。根据来自八个领地的 5259 张成年狼的相机陷阱图像，我们分析了在一个有大量公共通道的高度开垦地（丹麦）中，昼夜活动模式在多大程度上可以从黑暗、人类活动和猎物（鹿）活动的昼夜变化中得到解释。资源选择功能将每一次相机观测（使用）与同一天的 24 次替代性小时观测（可用性）进行对比，发现昼夜活动同时与所有三个因素相关，其中人类活动的影响最大（负），其次是黑暗（正）和鹿的活动（正）。包含这三种影响的模型解析度较低，对使用和可得性观测结果的分类与 "昼夜节律 "模型一样好，后者将使用-可得性比率作为一天中时间的函数进行平滑处理。人类活动的变化解释了大部分对黑暗的选择，支持了夜间性（在昼夜平分时夜间与白天的观测比例）是时间性人类回避的代表这一观点。与我们的预期相反，在公共通道不受限制的地区，狼的夜间活动并不比在公共通道仅限于道路的地区多，这可能是因为在所有地区，狼都很少有机会在不穿越道路的情况下步行超过几百米。总体而言，丹麦狼群在夜间的活跃程度是白天的 6.5 倍（95% 置信区间：4.6-9.6），是迄今为止报告的夜间最活跃的狼群之一。这些结果证实了一种预测，即狼群在生境中躲避人类的空间选择有限时，会更多地投资于时间上的躲避。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Wildlife Biology 生物-动物学

CiteScore

4.30

自引率

0.00%

发文量

审稿时长

>12 weeks

期刊介绍： WILDLIFE BIOLOGY is a high-quality scientific forum directing concise and up-to-date information to scientists, administrators, wildlife managers and conservationists. The journal encourages and welcomes original papers, short communications and reviews written in English from throughout the world. The journal accepts theoretical, empirical, and practical articles of high standard from all areas of wildlife science with the primary task of creating the scientific basis for the enhancement of wildlife management practices. Our concept of ''wildlife'' mainly includes mammal and bird species, but studies on other species or phenomena relevant to wildlife management are also of great interest. We adopt a broad concept of wildlife management, including all structures and actions with the purpose of conservation, sustainable use, and/or control of wildlife and its habitats, in order to safeguard sustainable relationships between wildlife and other human interests.