Over the last century, the wild boar (Sus scrofa) has become an important wildlife species in both economic and ecological terms. Considered a pest by some and a resource by others, its rapid increase in population and distribution has raised management concerns. Studies on activity rhythms may provide useful insights into its overall ecology and help develop effective management strategies. By examining highly detailed activity data collected by means of accelerometers fitted on GPS-collars, we studied wild boar daily activity rhythms and the effect of environmental conditions on their diurnal and nocturnal activity. We thus provided evidence of the predominantly nocturnal and monophasic activity of wild boars. All year round, we reported low activity levels during the day, which opportunistically increased under the most favourable environmental conditions. Activity was found to be significantly affected by such weather conditions as temperature, precipitation and air relative humidity. Moreover, we found that nocturnal activity slightly increased as moonlight increased. Part of our analysis was focused on the hunting period in order to investigate whether wild boars modify their activity levels in response to hunting disturbance. Our results suggested that wild boar nocturnal habits are not directly influenced by the current hunting disturbance, though we hypothesised that they may have evolved over several decades of hunting harassment. Alternatively, but not exclusively, nocturnal habits may have evolved as a low-cost strategy to achieve an optimum thermal balance (i.e., behavioural thermoregulation)

This study investigated the anti-predator strategies adopted by 19 radio-collared female roe deer during the fawning season by monitoring their spatial behaviour and habitat selection by means of radio-tracking. The study was carried out in a forest area of the Apennine Mountains (central Italy), where wolves are natural predators of roe deer and in summer fawns are more frequently predated than adult roe deer. The presence of fawns was monitored by means of direct observations. Roe deer fawns are known to adopt the hiding strategy during the lactation period, when they lie concealed for long periods waiting for their mothers' milk. As a consequence of this, the home-range sizes of mothers were significantly smaller than those of non-mothers during the summer lactation only. In contrast, no significant difference was found in spring, when fawns were absent, or autumn, when they were already weaned. In order to increase the success of the hiding strategy adopted by their fawns against wolf predation, mothers selected denser habitats (deciduous coppice forests) that provided denser undergrowth vegetation and limited visibility. In doing so, mothers traded open areas for forests throughout the fawning season. Indeed, mothers made significant habitat selection throughout the monitored period, and this was marked after the birth of fawns. In contrast, non-mothers generally used habitat types according to their availability. During lactation, the correlation between habitat use by mothers and habitat visibility (assessed using the form of a standard-sized roe deer) was inversely significant. These results taken together highlight the importance of anti-predator strategies adopted by roe deer mothers during the critical phase for fawn survival.

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