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Habitat quality, configuration and context effects on roe deer fecundity across a forested landscape mosaic.

ABSTRACT: Effective landscape-scale management of source-sink deer populations will be strengthened by understanding whether local variation in habitat quality drives heterogeneity in productivity. We related female roe deer Capreolus capreolus fecundity and body mass to habitat composition and landscape context, separately for adults and yearlings, using multi-model inference (MMI) applied to a large sample of individuals (yearlings: fecundity = 202, body mass = 395; adults: fecundity = 908, body mass = 1669) culled during 2002-2015 from an extensive (195 km2) heterogeneous forest landscape. Adults were heavier (inter-quartile, IQ, effect size = +0.5kg) when culled in buffers comprising more arable lands while contrary to our prediction no effects on body mass of grassland, young forest or access to vegetation on calcareous soil were found. Heavier adults were more fertile (IQ effect size, +12% probability of having two embryos instead of one or zero). Counter-intuitively, adults with greater access to arable lands were less fecund (IQ effect of arable: -7% probability of having two embryos, instead of one or zero), and even accounting for greater body mass of adults with access to arable, their modelled fecundity was similar to or lower than that of adults in the forest interior. In contrast, effects of grassland, young forest and calcareous soil did not receive support. Yearling body mass had an effect on fecundity twice that found in adults (+23% probability of having one additional embryo), but yearling body mass and fecundity were not affected by any candidate habitat or landscape variables. Effect of arable lands on body mass and fecundity were small, with little variance explained (Coefficient of Variation of predicted fecundity across forest sub-regions = 0.03 for adults). More variance in fecundity was attributed to other differences between forest management sub-regions (modelled as random effects), suggesting other factors might be important. When analysing source-sink population dynamics to support management, an average value of fecundity can be appropriate across a heterogeneous forest landscape.

SUBMITTER: Zini V

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6934308 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Habitat quality, configuration and context effects on roe deer fecundity across a forested landscape mosaic.

Zini Valentina V Wäber Kristin K Dolman Paul M PM

PloS one 20191227 12

Effective landscape-scale management of source-sink deer populations will be strengthened by understanding whether local variation in habitat quality drives heterogeneity in productivity. We related female roe deer Capreolus capreolus fecundity and body mass to habitat composition and landscape context, separately for adults and yearlings, using multi-model inference (MMI) applied to a large sample of individuals (yearlings: fecundity = 202, body mass = 395; adults: fecundity = 908, body mass = ...[more]

PMID: 31881043

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Project description:Background. Understanding species distribution, especially areas of overlapping habitat between sympatric species, is essential for informing conservation through natural habitat protection. New protection strategies should simultaneously consider conservation efforts for multiple species that exist within the same landscape, which requires studies that include habitat overlap analysis. Methods. We estimated the potential habitat of cervids, which are typical ungulates in northern China, using the present locations of red deer (Cervus elaphus; N = 90) and roe deer (Capreolus capreolus; N = 106) in a Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) model. Our study area was a human-dominated landscape in the Tieli Forestry Bureau located at the southern slope of the Lesser Xing'an Mountains. We grouped 17 environmental predictor variables into five predictor classes (terrain, habitat accessibility, land cover, vegetation feature, and interference), which were used to build habitat suitability models. Results. Habitat accessibility and human interferences were found to have the strongest influence on habitat suitability among the five variable classes. Among the environmental factors, distance to farmland (26.8%), distance to bush-grass land (14.6%), elevation (13.5%), and distance to water source (12.2%) were most important for red deer, distance to farmland (22.9%), distance to settlement (21.4%), elevation (11.6%), and coverage of shrub-grass (8%) were most important for roe deer. Model accuracy was high for both species (mean area under the curve (AUC) = 0.936 for red deer and 0.924 for roe deer). The overlapping habitat comprised 89.93 km(2) within the study area, which occupied 94% of potentially suitable habitat for red deer and 27% for roe deer. Conclusions. In terms of habitat suitability, roe deer showed greater selectivity than red deer. The overlapping habitat was mostly located in the eastern mountains. The southwestern plain was not a suitable habitat for deer because it was close to Tieli City. Regarding management measures, we suggest that priority protection should be given to the potential areas of overlapping deer habitats found in this study.

Dataset Information

Habitat quality, configuration and context effects on roe deer fecundity across a forested landscape mosaic.

Publications

Habitat quality, configuration and context effects on roe deer fecundity across a forested landscape mosaic.

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