Habitat use under predation risk: hunting, roads and human dwellings influence the spatial behaviour of roe deer
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Habitat use under predation risk: hunting, roads and human dwellings influence the spatial behaviour of roe deer Nadège Bonnot & Nicolas Morellet & Hélène Verheyden & Bruno Cargnelutti & Bruno Lourtet & François Klein & A. J. Mark Hewison
Received: 18 May 2012 / Revised: 7 September 2012 / Accepted: 10 September 2012 # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012
Abstract Wildlife populations are subjected to increasing pressure linked to human activities, which introduce multiple stressors. Recently, in addition to direct effects, it has been shown that indirect (non-lethal) effects of predation risk are predominant in many populations. Predation risk is often structured in space and time, generating a heterogeneous “landscape of fear” within which animals can minimize risks by modifying their habitat use. Furthermore, for ungulates, resource quality seems to be positively correlated with humanrelated sources of risk. We studied the trade-off between access to resources of high-quality and risk-taking by contrasting habitat use of roe deer during daytime with that during nighttime for 94 roe deer in a hunted population. Our first hypothesis was that roe deer should avoid human disturbance by modifying their habitat use during daytime compared to nighttime. Our results supported this, as roe deer mainly used open fields during nighttime, but used more forested habitats during daytime, when human disturbance is higher. Moreover, we found that diel patterns in habitat use were influenced by hunting disturbance. Indeed, the roe deer decreased their use of high-crops during daytime, an important source of cover and Communicated by C. Gortázar Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10344-012-0665-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. N. Bonnot (*) : N. Morellet : H. Verheyden : B. Cargnelutti : B. Lourtet : A. J. M. Hewison INRA, UR35 Comportement et Ecologie de la Faune Sauvage, CS 52627, 31326 Castanet-Tolosan, France e-mail: [email protected] F. Klein ONCFS, CNERA Cervidés-Sanglier, 55000 Bar-le-Duc, France
food, during the hunting season. The proximity of roads and dwellings also affected habitat use, since roe deer used open fields during daytime to a greater extent when the distance to these sources of disturbance was higher. Hence, our results suggest that roe deer resolve the trade-off between the acquisition of high-quality resources and risk avoidance by modifying their habitat use between day and night. Keywords Habitat use . Diel patterns . Hunting . Human disturbance . Predation risk . Roe deer
Introduction In predator–prey interaction, predators affect demography and population dynamics of their prey through direct predation (lethal effects), but also through the modification of the behavioural responses of prey to predators, or risk effects (Brown et al. 1999; Preisser et al. 2005; Creel and Christianson 2008). Predation risk is generally structured in space and time (Lima and Bednekoff 1999; Sih et al.
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