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Seasonal and daily shifts in behavior and resource selection: how a carnivore navigates costly landscapes.

ABSTRACT: The dynamic environmental conditions in highly seasonal systems likely have a strong influence on how species use the landscape. Animals must balance seasonal and daily changes to landscape risk with the underlying resources provided by that landscape. One way to balance the seasonal and daily changes in the costs and benefits of a landscape is through behaviorally-explicit resource selection and temporal partitioning. Here, we test whether resource selection of coyotes (Canis latrans) in Cape Breton Highlands National Park, Nova Scotia, Canada is behaviorally-explicit and responsive to the daily and seasonal variation to presumed costs and benefits of moving on the landscape. We used GPS data and local convex hulls to estimate space use and Hidden Markov Models to estimate three types of movement behavior: encamped, foraging, and traveling. We then used integrated step-selection analysis to investigate behaviorally explicit resource selection across times of day (diurnal, crepuscular, and nocturnal) and season (snow-free and snow). We found that throughout the day and seasonally coyotes shifted foraging behavior and altered behavior and resource choices to avoid moving across what we could be a challenging landscape. These changes in behavior suggest that coyotes have a complex response to land cover, terrain, and linear corridors that are not only scale dependent but also vary by behavior, diel period, and season. By examining the resource selection across three axes (behavior, time of day, and season), we have a more nuanced understanding of how a predator balances the cost and benefits of a stochastic environment.

SUBMITTER: Ellington EH

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7561532 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Seasonal and daily shifts in behavior and resource selection: how a carnivore navigates costly landscapes.

Ellington E Hance EH Muntz Erich M EM Gehrt Stanley D SD

Oecologia 20200916 1-2

The dynamic environmental conditions in highly seasonal systems likely have a strong influence on how species use the landscape. Animals must balance seasonal and daily changes to landscape risk with the underlying resources provided by that landscape. One way to balance the seasonal and daily changes in the costs and benefits of a landscape is through behaviorally-explicit resource selection and temporal partitioning. Here, we test whether resource selection of coyotes (Canis latrans) in Cape B ...[more]

PMID: 32939575

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Project description:BackgroundGlobal increases in human activity threaten connectivity of animal habitat and populations. Protection and restoration of wildlife habitat and movement corridors require robust models to forecast the effects of human activity on movement behaviour, resource selection, and connectivity. Recent research suggests that animal resource selection and responses to human activity depend on their behavioural movement state, with increased tolerance for human activity in fast states of movement. Yet, few studies have incorporated state-dependent movement behaviour into analyses of Merriam connectivity, that is individual-based metrics of connectivity that incorporate landscape structure and movement behaviour.MethodsWe assessed the cumulative effects of anthropogenic development on multiple movement processes including movement behaviour, resource selection, and Merriam connectivity. We simulated movement paths using hidden Markov movement models and step selection functions to estimate habitat use and connectivity for three landscape scenarios: reference conditions with no anthropogenic development, current conditions, and future conditions with a simulated expansion of towns and recreational trails. Our analysis used 20 years of grizzly bear (Ursus arctos) and gray wolf (Canis lupus) movement data collected in and around Banff National Park, Canada.ResultsCarnivores increased their speed of travel near towns and areas of high trail and road density, presumably to avoid encounters with people. They exhibited stronger avoidance of anthropogenic development when foraging and resting compared to travelling and during the day compared to night. Wolves exhibited stronger avoidance of anthropogenic development than grizzly bears. Current development reduced the amount of high-quality habitat between two mountain towns by more than 35%. Habitat degradation constrained movement routes around towns and was most pronounced for foraging and resting behaviour. Current anthropogenic development reduced connectivity from reference conditions an average of 85%. Habitat quality and connectivity further declined under a future development scenario.ConclusionsOur results highlight the cumulative effects of anthropogenic development on carnivore movement behaviour, habitat use, and connectivity. Our strong behaviour-specific responses to human activity suggest that conservation initiatives should consider how proposed developments and restoration actions would affect where animals travel and how they use the landscape.

Project description:Deforestation and agricultural expansion in the tropics affect local and regional climatic conditions, leading to synergistic negative impacts on land ecosystems. Climatic changes manifest in increased inter- and intraseasonal variations and frequency of extreme climatic events (i.e., droughts and floods), which have evident consequences for aboveground biodiversity. However, until today, there have been no studies on how land use affects seasonal variations below ground in tropical ecosystems, which may be more buffered against climatic variation. Here, we analyzed seasonal variations in soil parameters, basal respiration, microbial communities, and abundances of soil invertebrates along with microclimatic conditions in rainforest and monocultures of oil palm and rubber in Sumatra, Indonesia. About 75% (20 out of 26) of the measured litter and soil, microbial, and animal parameters varied with season, with seasonal changes in 50% of the parameters depending on land use. Land use affected seasonal variations in microbial indicators associated with carbon availability and cycling rate. The magnitude of seasonal variations in microbial parameters in the soil of monocultures was almost 40% higher than in the soil of rainforest. Measured parameters were associated with short-term climatic conditions (3-day period air humidity) in plantations, but not in rainforest, confirming a reduced soil buffering ability in plantations. Overall, our findings suggest that land use temporally shifts and increases the magnitude of seasonal variations of the belowground ecosystem compartment, with microbial communities responding most strongly. The increased seasonal variations in soil biota in plantations likely translate into more pronounced fluctuations in essential ecosystem functions such as nutrient cycling and carbon sequestration, and these ramifications ultimately may compromise the stability of tropical ecosystems in the long term. As the observed seasonal dynamics is likely to increase with both local and global climate change, these shifts need closer attention for the long-term sustainable management of plantation systems in the tropics.

Project description:Herbivores consider the variation of forage qualities (nutritional content and digestibility) as well as quantities (biomass) when foraging. Such selection patterns may change based on the scale of foraging, particularly in the case of ungulates that forage at many scales.To test selection for quality and quantity in free-ranging herbivores across scales, however, we must first develop landscape-wide quantitative estimates of both forage quantity and quality. Stoichiometric distribution models (StDMs) bring opportunity to address this because they predict the elemental measures and stoichiometry of resources at landscape extents.Here, we use StDMs to predict elemental measures of understory white birch quality (% nitrogen) and quantity (g carbon/m2) across two boreal landscapes. We analyzed global positioning system (GPS) collared moose (n = 14) selection for forage quantity and quality at the landscape, home range, and patch extents using both individual and pooled resource selection analyses. We predicted that as the scale of resource selection decreased from the landscape to the patch, selection for white birch quantity would decrease and selection for quality would increase.Counter to our prediction, pooled-models showed selection for our estimates of quantity and quality to be neutral with low explanatory power and no scalar trends. At the individual-level, however, we found evidence for quality and quantity trade-offs, most notably at the home-range scale where resource selection models explain the largest amount of variation in selection. Furthermore, individuals did not follow the same trade-off tactic, with some preferring forage quantity over quality and vice versa.Such individual trade-offs show that moose may be flexible in attaining a limiting nutrient. Our findings suggest that herbivores may respond to forage elemental compositions and quantities, giving tools like StDMs merit toward animal ecology applications. The integration of StDMs and animal movement data represents a promising avenue for progress in the field of zoogeochemistry.

Project description:The re-establishment of large carnivores in Norway has led to increased conflicts and the adoption of regional zoning for these predators. When planning the future distribution of large carnivores, it is important to consider details of their potential habitat tolerances and strength of inter-specific differentiation. We studied differentiation in habitat and kill sites within the large-carnivore community of south-eastern Norway.We compared habitat selection of the brown bear Ursus arctos L., Eurasian lynx Lynx lynx L., wolf Canis lupus L. and wolverine Gulo gulo L., based on radio-tracking data. Differences in kill site locations were explored using locations of documented predator-killed sheep Ovis aries L. We modelled each species' selection for, and differentiation in, habitat and kill sites on a landscape scale using resource selection functions and multinomial logistic regression. Based on projected probability of occurrence maps, we estimated continuous patches of habitat within the study area.Although bears, lynx, wolves and wolverines had overlapping distributions, we found a clear differentiation for all four species in both habitat and kill sites. The presence of bears, wolves and lynx was generally associated with rugged, forested areas at lower elevations, whereas wolverines selected rugged terrain at higher elevations. Some degree of sympatry was possible in over 40% of the study area, although only 1.5% could hold all four large carnivores together.Synthesis and applications. A geographically differentiated management policy has been adopted in Norway, aimed at conserving viable populations of large carnivores while minimizing the potential for conflicts. Sympatry of all four carnivores will be most successful if regional zones are established of adequate size spanning an elevational gradient. High prey densities, low carnivore densities, low dietary overlap and scavenging opportunities have most probably led to reduced competitive exclusion. Although regional sympatry enhances the conservation of an intact guild of large carnivores, it may well increase conflict levels and resistance to carnivore conservation locally.

Project description:Species may be driven extinct by climate change, unless their populations are able to shift fast enough to track regions of suitable climate. Shifting will be faster as the proportion of suitable habitat in the landscape increases. However, it is not known how the spatial arrangement of habitat will affect the speed of range advance, especially when habitat is scarce, as is the case for many specialist species. We develop methods for calculating the speed of advance that are appropriate for highly fragmented, stochastic systems. We reveal that spatial aggregation of habitat tends to reduce the speed of advance throughout a wide range of species parameters: different dispersal distances and dispersal kernel shapes, and high and low extinction probabilities. In contrast, aggregation increases the steady-state proportion of habitat that is occupied (without climate change). Nonetheless, we find that it is possible to achieve both rapid advance and relatively high patch occupancy when the habitat has a "channeled" pattern, resembling corridors or chains of stepping stones. We adapt techniques from electrical circuit theory to predict the rate of advance efficiently for complex, realistic landscape patterns, whereas the rate cannot be predicted by any simple statistic of aggregation or fragmentation. Conservationists are already advocating corridors and stepping stones as important conservation tools under climate change, but they are vaguely defined and have so far lacked a convincing basis in fundamental population biology. Our work shows how to discriminate properties of a landscape's spatial pattern that affect the speed of colonization (including, but not limited to, patterns like corridors and chains of stepping stones), and properties that affect a species' probability of persistence once established. We can therefore point the way to better land use planning approaches, which will provide functional habitat linkages and also maintain local population viability.

Project description:Many ecosystems face multiple invaders, and interactions among invasive and native species may complicate conservation efforts for imperiled species. Examination of fine-scale resource selection can be used to detect patterns in habitat selection resulting from species interactions and assess the value of specific resources, including invasive plants, to wildlife. We used animal location data with mixed-effects resource selection models to examine seasonal competitive interactions and species-specific selection for forage and cover resources by an imperiled native lagomorph, the New England cottontail Sylvilagus transitionalis and its nonnative competitor, the eastern cottontail S. floridanus in the eastern Hudson Valley, NY. We found evidence that resource selection by New England cottontails depended on the relative prevalence of eastern cottontails to New England cottontails. Where eastern cottontails were less prevalent New England cottontail selected for resources characteristic of early successional shrublands. Where eastern cottontails were more prevalent, New England cottontails selected for resources characteristic of later successional shrublands. New England cottontail use of certain invasive shrubs depended on the prevalence of eastern cottontails relative to New England cottontails, suggesting response to invasive plants is confounded by interactions with a nonnative competitor. Our results further emphasize the need for conservation efforts to consider invasive management within the ecosystem context. We demonstrate the utility of resource selection studies to assist in this regard by exploring competitive interactions in the absence of removal studies, while simultaneously assessing the impact of habitat components such as invasive vegetation on species of conservation concern. Synthesis and applications Resource selection studies can be directly applied to inform ongoing species conservation where multiple invaders are present or where species interactions influence resource selection. Fine-scale assessments of resource selection, similar to those presented here, can be used to selectively manage habitat to benefit desired species within the ecosystem context.

Dataset Information

Seasonal and daily shifts in behavior and resource selection: how a carnivore navigates costly landscapes.

Publications

Seasonal and daily shifts in behavior and resource selection: how a carnivore navigates costly landscapes.

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