Resident European ground squirrels exhibit higher stress levels than translocated individuals after conservation reinfor
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Resident European ground squirrels exhibit higher stress levels than translocated individuals after conservation reinforcement Maria Kachamakova1 · Yordan Koshev1 · Eva Millesi2 Received: 3 May 2020 / Accepted: 1 September 2020 © Deutsche Gesellschaft für Säugetierkunde 2020
Abstract The European ground squirrel (Spermophilus citellus) is a rodent inhabiting the open grasslands of central and southeastern Europe. The species is endangered, and various conservation activities are being conducted to preserve and improve the populations’ status, especially during the recent years including translocations of individuals. The success of these measures has varied and is potentially strongly influenced by the chronic and acute stress associated with the translocation process itself. This stress load, however, has rarely been investigated in the framework of such conservation projects, neither in translocated nor in resident individuals. To fill this gap, we investigated glucocorticoid metabolite concentrations in translocated ground squirrels and compared these with concentrations in resident animals of a reinforced colony in southeastern Bulgaria. Between 2017 and 2019, we sampled a total of 252 individuals for faecal cortisol metabolite concentrations (FCM). The results showed that FCM decreased after the release in translocated individuals and that the time span after the translocation event was the key variable explaining the decrease. Surprisingly, the FCM levels were higher in the resident ground squirrels than in the translocated individuals throughout the active season and in the following spring. Furthermore, we found no effect of FCM concentrations on dispersal distances or body mass gain in translocated individuals. Keywords Spermophilus citellus · Translocation · FCM · Stress · Conservation
Introduction The European ground squirrel or European souslik (Spermophilus citellus) is a small mammal inhabiting the open grasslands of central and southeastern Europe. It is a hibernating rodent. The active season is typically between March and September with only one reproduction event. The European ground squirrel is listed as “Endangered” by IUCN (Hegyeli 2020) and the decline of its populations is mainly due to habitat loss because of changes in land use—abandonment of the extensive livestock grazing, pasture succession and conversion of pastures into arable land (Koshev 2013). This Handling editor: Yoshiyuki Henning. * Maria Kachamakova [email protected] 1
Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Tzar Osvoboditel Blvd 1, 1000 Sofia, Bulgaria
Department of Behavioral and Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna, Althanstrasse 14, 1090 Vienna, Austria
2
process heavily impacts the whole open grassland ecosystem in which the species plays a keystone role—the European ground squirrel is a prey for many endangered bird and mammal species (Ramos-Lara et al. 2014), it is associated with a number of specialised insects and contributes to pla
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