Dataset Information

Diet and wild ungulate preferences of wolves in northwestern Anatolia during winter.

ABSTRACT: The gray wolf (Canis lupus) is making a comeback in many habitats in central Europe, where it has been once extirpated. Although densities are still low to moderate, this comeback already raises management concerns. In Anatolia, the gray wolf is one of the most common predator species occupying almost all kind of habitats. Although its numbers were reduced in some parts of the country, it has never been extirpated and lived in sympatry with humans. In this study we investigated, for the first time, the winter diet of wolves in north-west Anatolia, where a multispecies wild ungulate community occurs in sympatry with high density livestock. We selected two geographically close but different habitats (steppe and forest) with different wild prey availabilities and compositions. In both areas ungulate contribution to winter diet biomass was more than 90%. Wolf pack size (four to eight wolves) were higher in the study area where livestock numbers and human disturbance were lower and wild prey were more available. In both study areas, wild boar (Sus scrofa) was the main and most preferred food item (Chesson's ? = 0.7 - 0.9) and it occurred at higher density where wolf pack size was smaller. We could not find a high preference (Chesson's ? = 0.3) and high winter predation pressure on the reintroduced Anatolian wild sheep (Ovis gmelinii anatolica) population that occurs in the study area covered by steppe vegetation. Contribution of livestock and food categories other than wild ungulates to wolf diet stayed low. Wolves can help mitigate human-wildlife conflict regulating wild boar numbers, the most common conflict-causing ungulate species in Anatolia. Instead of managing wolf numbers in human dominated landscapes, we recommend reintroduction of wild ungulates to the areas where they became locally extinct and replaced by livestock.

SUBMITTER: Mengulluoglu D

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6708370 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Diet and wild ungulate preferences of wolves in northwestern Anatolia during winter.

Mengüllüoğlu Deniz D İlaslan Eylül E Emir Hasan H Berger Anne A

PeerJ 20190821

The gray wolf (<i>Canis lupus</i>) is making a comeback in many habitats in central Europe, where it has been once extirpated. Although densities are still low to moderate, this comeback already raises management concerns. In Anatolia, the gray wolf is one of the most common predator species occupying almost all kind of habitats. Although its numbers were reduced in some parts of the country, it has never been extirpated and lived in sympatry with humans. In this study we investigated, for the f ...[more]

PMID: 31497386

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Project description:BACKGROUND:As a cross-boundary resource subsidy, spawning salmon can strongly affect consumer and ecosystem ecology. Here we examine whether this marine resource can influence a terrestrial wolf-deer (Canis lupus-Odocoileus hemionus) predator-prey system in coastal British Columbia, Canada. Data on resource availability and resource use among eight wolf groups for three seasons over four years allow us to evaluate competing hypotheses that describe salmon as either an alternate resource, consumed in areas where deer are scarce, or as a targeted resource, consumed as a positive function of its availability. Faecal (n=2203 wolf scats) and isotopic analyses (n=60 wolf hair samples) provide independent data sets, also allowing us to examine how consistent these common techniques are in estimating foraging behaviour. RESULTS:At the population level during spring and summer, deer remains occurred in roughly 90 and 95% of faeces respectively. When salmon become available in autumn, however, the population showed a pronounced dietary shift in which deer consumption among groups was negatively correlated (r=-0.77, P<0.001) with consumption of salmon, which occurred in 40% of all faeces and up to 70% of faeces for some groups. This dietary shift as detected by faecal analysis was correlated with seasonal shifts in delta13C isotopic signatures (r=0.78; P=0.008), which were calculated by intra-hair comparisons between segments grown during summer and fall. The magnitude of this seasonal isotopic shift, our proxy for salmon use, was related primarily to estimates of salmon availability, not deer availability, among wolf groups. CONCLUSION:Concordance of faecal and isotopic data suggests our intra-hair isotopic methodology provides an accurate proxy for salmon consumption, and might reliably track seasonal dietary shifts in other consumer-resource systems. Use of salmon by wolves as a function of its abundance and the adaptive explanations we provide suggest a long-term and widespread association between wolves and salmon. Seasonally, this system departs from the common wolf-ungulate model. Broad ecological implications include the potential transmission of marine-based disease into terrestrial systems, the effects of marine subsidy on wolf-deer population dynamics, and the distribution of salmon nutrients by wolves into coastal ecosystems.

Project description:Adaptation during the domestication from wolves (Canis lupus) to dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) is a debated ecological topic. Changes in food and environment are major divergences in the domestication of dogs. Gut microbes play an important role in animal adaptation to the food and environmental changes. In this study, shotgun sequencing was performed to compare the species diversity and functional diversity of gut microbes in wild wolves (group CLW, n = 3), captive wolves (group CLC, n = 4), and domestic dogs (group CLF, n = 4). The results found that Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, Fusobacteria, Proteobacteria and Actinobacteria were the most abundant phyla and Bacteroides, Fusobacterium, Prevotella, Megamonas, Paraprevotella, Faecalibacterium, Clostridium were the most abundant genera in the gut of wolves and dogs. Groups CLW, CLC and CLF have shown significant difference in gut microbial species diversity and functional diversity. Bacteroides, Fusobacterium and Faecalibacterium were most abundant genera in groups CLW, CLC and CLF, respectively. Their abundance varied significantly among groups. Compared to the wild wolves, the intestinal microbiol genes of domestic dogs were significantly enriched in the carbohydrate metabolism pathway of KEGG database. One hundred and seventy-seven enzymes were detected with significantly higher abundance in group CLF than that in group CLW, and 49 enzymes showed extremely significant higher abundance in group CLF than that in group CLW (q < 0.01) base on the function abundance annotated in CAZy database. It is noteworthy that there were also significant differences in the abundance of 140 enzymes between groups CLC and CLW (q < 0.05). Clustering analysis based on both the species and the function abundance of intestinal microbiota all found that groups CLC and CLF clustered into one branch, while samples from group CLW clustered into the other branch. This result suggests that captive wolves are more similar to domestic dogs than wild wolves in both species composition and function composition of intestinal microbiota.

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Dataset Information

Diet and wild ungulate preferences of wolves in northwestern Anatolia during winter.

Publications

Diet and wild ungulate preferences of wolves in northwestern Anatolia during winter.

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