Females know better: Sex‐biased habitat selection by the European wildcat

Abstract

The interactions between animals and their environment vary across species, regions, but also with gender. Sex‐specific relations between individuals and the ecosystem may entail different behavioral choices and be expressed through different patterns of habitat use. Regardless, only rarely sex‐specific traits are addressed in ecological modeling approaches. The European wildcat (Felis silvestris silvestris) is a species of conservation concern in Europe, with a highly fragmented and declining distribution across most of its range. We assessed sex‐specific habitat selection patterns for the European wildcat, at the landscape and home range levels, across its Iberian biogeographic distribution using a multipopulation approach. We developed resource selection functions in a use‐availability framework using radio‐telemetry data from five wildcat populations. At the landscape level, we observed that, while both genders preferentially established home ranges in areas close to broadleaf forests and far from humanized areas, females selected mid‐range elevation areas with some topographic complexity, whereas males used lowland areas. At the home range level, both females and males selected areas dominated by scrublands or broadleaf forests, but habitat features were less important at this level. The strength of association to habitat features was higher for females at both spatial levels, suggesting a tendency to select habitats with higher quality that can grant them enhanced access to shelter and feeding resources. Based on our results, we hypothesize that sex‐biased behavioral patterns may contribute to the resilience of wildcats’ genetic integrity through influencing the directionality of hybridization with domestic cats. Our study provides information about European wildcats’ habitat use in an Iberian context, relevant for the implementation of conservation plans, and highlights the ecological relevance of considering sex‐related differences in environmental preferences.

Fragmentation and low density as major conservation challenges for the southernmost populations of the European wildcat

“…We used 370 independent locations of nine resident radio-tagged wildcats (four adult females and five adult males), which were captured within a camera-trapping block (#18, Fig 1) in the Béticas range; radiotracking periods were March 2003 to September 2004 and November 2017 to February 2019. Following a scientific standardized protocol designed and largely used for our target species [15], animals were captured with box-traps (metal cages of 100 x 50 x 70 cm, porting in our case a wooden roof to prevent from sun or rains), using live house pigeons (Columba sp.) as lure, unavailable to captured carnivores thanks to an isolation cage that prevents injuries.…”

“…The best GLM model was resampled from a 40-metre resolution raster to a UTM 5x5 km square net (using the spatial analysis extension on ArcMap 10). The 5x5 UTM square is a geographic unit similar in size (25 km 2 ) to the average camera sampling circle (28.2km 2 ), and thus it has a remarkable biological significance for European wildcat spatial ecology (range of territory in southern Mediterranean Iberian Peninsula = 1.70-13.71km 2 [11,15]). We overlapped the 5x5 km square net with the resulting MaxEnt wildcat distribution map of Andalusia, and then removed the 5x5 km squares with less than 10% of potential presence (<2.5 km 2 ), since they did not reach the minimum size for a female wildcat territory (2.28 km 2 [11]).…”

“…These are key advantages over intrusive surveys like radio-tracking, which was previously used for modelling the habitat and distribution of the wildcat in central Europe [51]. Radio-tracking is usually biased towards areas that maximize the chances for captures of individuals to be tagged, and thus is carried out at a priori known areas of good density, as revealed by studies carried out on European wildcats [11,15,51]. Our camera-trapping survey has allowed for more randomly distributed surveys, hence covering a wider range of density situations.…”

“…This is the paradigmatic case of the European wildcat (Felis silvestris silvestris), an emblematic feline that has been the target of several studies on its ecology (e.g. [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15]) and especially, on its problematic hybridization with domestic cats [16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27]. Today, it is assumed to be an endangered taxa in most of the countries in which it lives [28].…”

Hybridization between Felis silvestris silvestris and Felis silvestris catus in two contrasted environments in France

“…In this study, we aim to compare hybridization patterns of two local populations living in two contrasted environments, working mostly on samples collected within the habitat of wildcats, either blood or hair from live-trapped individuals or feces. We extend our knowledge on the northeastern populations of wildcats and domestic cats studied in Beugin et al (2016) by integrating a much larger sample of domestic cats; this allows us to better predict the rate of hybridization within the domestic cats and to assess whether hybrids are more present in villages than in forests, a pattern that we expect to be promoted by the sexual segregationmales at the periphery of the forest, females within-reported in Beugin et al (2016) and Oliveira et al (2018). In addition, we sampled and analyzed genetic data in a French Pyrenean wildcat population.…”