Human presence and human footprint have non-equivalent effects on wildlife spatiotemporal habitat use

Nickel, Barry; Suraci, Justin P.; Allen, Maximilian L.; Wilmers, Christopher C.

doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2019.108383

Cited by 129 publications

(147 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…This is because space use by predators creates areas in the landscape that prey perceives as high or low risk (the ‘landscape of fear’) (Laundré, Hernández, Altendorf 2001, Gaynor et al ., 2019), which, in turn, affects prey behaviour. Predator–prey theory suggests that prey can respond to risk at multiple scales, with long‐term (predictable) risk factors leading to spatial avoidance (risky‐places hypothesis) (Creel et al ., 2008; Dröge et al ., 2017; Bubnicki et al ., 2019; Nickel et al ., 2020) and short‐term (unpredictable) risky factors to temporal partitioning (risky‐times hypothesis) (Dröge et al ., 2017; Nickel et al ., 2020). The level of risk perceived by prey may also depend on the type of cue encountered (Cromsigt et al ., 2013; Kuijper et al ., 2014), for example a single direct encounter with a predator could be perceived as an intense short‐term risk triggering heightened vigilance or fleeing, whereas frequent encounters of a predator (or its scats, urine, body odour, etc.)…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fossoriality in a risky landscape: badger sett use varies with perceived wolf risk

et al. 2020

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Many medium‐sized carnivores are fossorial and use burrow systems to reduce predation risk or avoid predators. But fossorial species cannot stay safely underground forever, and they must also risk emerging overground, to forage and find mates. To make this trade‐off effectively and maximize their own fitness, it is imperative they assess how predation risk varies in space and time, and adapt their denning behaviour accordingly. We used European badger (Meles meles) burrows (setts) in Białowieża Forest, Poland as a model for investigating how the denning behaviour of a fossorial mesocarnivore varies across gradients of landscape scale perceived risk imposed by wolves (Canis lupus) and humans, defined as wolf space use and distance to settlements, respectively. We monitored seventeen setts with varying levels of perceived human and wolf risk with camera traps for two months to study three denning behaviours: frequency of badger sett use, frequency of badger sett sharing with other mesocarnivore species and badger emergence time. Frequency of sett use varied relative to perceived wolf but not human risk. Setts in the highest risk areas were used ca. 60% less often than those in the lowest perceived risk areas, and setts with juveniles were only present in areas of lower perceived risk. Food availability, quantified as earthworm abundance in an area of 2.1 km2 around setts, did not affect the frequency setts were used. Emergence time and frequency of sett sharing with other mesocarnivores, which have been proposed to be anti‐predator strategies, did not vary with either perceived risk factor. These results show fossorial species can adapt their use of burrows to the prevailing risk landscape and suggest burrows deserve more attention in studies on the ecological impacts of apex predators.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fossoriality in a risky landscape: badger sett use varies with perceived wolf risk

et al. 2020

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“…However, limited sample sizes of many human activity categories currently preclude more detailed analyses using an occupancy framework. Overall, human impacts encompass a variety of disturbances that impact ecosystems, both in our study and more broadly, and thus disentangling the responses of wildlife to specific human pressures may facilitate designing more effective conservation interventions ( Jones et al, 2018 ; Nickel et al, 2020 ). Our results are also suggestive of the potential ecological effects of changes to human activity in natural areas, which could result from fluctuations in tourism, infrastructure development, policy changes, and other local or global processes.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Humans disrupt access to prey for large African carnivores

Mills

Harris

2020

eLife

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Wildlife respond to human presence by adjusting their temporal niche, possibly modifying encounter rates among species and trophic dynamics that structure communities. We assessed wildlife diel activity responses to human presence and consequential changes in predator-prey overlap using 11,111 detections of 3 large carnivores and 11 ungulates across 21,430 camera trap-nights in West Africa. Over two-thirds of species exhibited diel responses to mainly diurnal human presence, with ungulate nocturnal activity increasing by 7.1%. Rather than traditional pairwise predator-prey diel comparisons, we considered spatiotemporally explicit predator access to several prey resources to evaluate community-level trophic responses to human presence. Although leopard prey access was not affected by humans, lion and spotted hyena access to three prey species significantly increased when prey increased their nocturnal activity to avoid humans. Human presence considerably influenced the composition of available prey, with implications for prey selection, demonstrating how humans perturb ecological processes via behavioral modifications.

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“…In the urban environment, human presence and human footprint on the environment are different concepts [ 69 ]. Our work demonstrates that weekend leisure activities might not cause the weather condition changes but the presence of humans can alter bat activity.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Weekend Effect on Urban Bat Activity Suggests Fine Scale Human-Induced Bat Movements

Crihfield

Feng

et al. 2020

Animals

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In the urban environment, wildlife faces novel human disturbances in unique temporal patterns. The weekend effect describes that human activities on weekends trigger changes in the environment and impact wildlife negatively. Reduced occurrence, altered behaviors, and/or reduced fitness have been found in birds, ungulates, and meso-carnivores due to the weekend effect. We aimed to investigate if urban bat activity would differ on weekends from weekdays. We analyzed year-round bat acoustic monitoring data collected from two sites near the city center and two sites in the residential area/park complex in the city periphery. We constructed generalized linear models and found that bat activity was significantly lower on weekends as compared to weekdays during spring and summer at the site in the open space near the city center. In contrast, during the same seasons, the sites in the city periphery showed increased bat activity on weekends. Hourly bat activity overnight suggested that bats might move from the city center to the periphery on weekends. We demonstrated the behavioral adaptability in urban wildlife for co-existing with human. We recommend that urban planning should implement practices such as adding new greenspaces and/or preserving old-growth vegetation to form continuous greenways from the city center to the city periphery as corridors to facilitate bat movements and reduce possible human-wildlife conflict.

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Human presence and human footprint have non-equivalent effects on wildlife spatiotemporal habitat use

Cited by 129 publications

References 52 publications

Fossoriality in a risky landscape: badger sett use varies with perceived wolf risk

Fossoriality in a risky landscape: badger sett use varies with perceived wolf risk

Humans disrupt access to prey for large African carnivores

The Weekend Effect on Urban Bat Activity Suggests Fine Scale Human-Induced Bat Movements

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