Secrets of Success in a Landscape of Fear: Urban Wild Boar Adjust Risk Perception and Tolerate Disturbance

Abstract

In urban areas with a high level of human disturbance, wildlife has to adjust its behavior to deal with the so called "landscape of fear." This can be studied in risk perception during movement in relation to specific habitat types, whereby individuals trade-off between foraging and disturbance. Due to its high behavioral plasticity and increasing occurrence in urban environments, wild boar (Sus scrofa) is an excellent model organism to study adjustment to urbanization. With the help of GPS tracking, space use of 11 wild boar from Berlin's metropolitan region was analyzed: we aimed at understanding how animals adjust space use to deal with the landscape of fear in urban areas compared to rural areas. We compared use vs. availability with help of generalized linear mixed models. First, we studied landscape types selected by rural vs. urban wild boar, second, we analyzed distances of wild boar locations to each of the landscape types. Finally, we mapped the resulting habitat selection probability to predict hotspots of human-wildlife conflicts. A higher tolerance to disturbance in urban wild boar was shown by a one third shorter flight distance and by an increased re-use of areas close to the trap. Urban wild boar had a strong preference for natural landscapes such as swamp areas, green areas and deciduous forests, and areas with high primary productivity, as indicated by high NDVI (normalized difference vegetation index) values. The areas selected by urban wild boar were often located closely to roads and houses. The spatial distribution maps show that a large area of Berlin would be suitable for urban wild boar but not their rural conspecifics, with the most likely reason being a different perception of anthropogenic disturbance. Wild boar therefore showed considerable behavioral plasticity suitable to adjust to human-dominated environments in a potentially evolutionarily adaptive manner.

Beyond the landscape: Resistance modelling infers physical and behavioural gene flow barriers to a mobile carnivore across a metropolitan area

“…Movement constraints imposed by human activity could be even more relevant for rural foxes that are less accustomed to human presence (see also Stillfried, Gras, et al, ). Our results show that rural foxes, unlike their city relatives, do not use artificial structures as dispersal corridors and that dispersal was limited by the city border (Figure ).…”

Analysing the recolonisation of a highly fragmented landscape by wild boar using a landscape genetic approach

“…However, it has also been shown that wild boar show substantial plasticity regarding adjustment to human-dominated environments i.e. landscape of fear (Stillfried et al 2017); wild boar tolerate human presence by modulating their risk perception and even use humanassociated habitat classes. Wild boar dispersal is thus not limited by human-dominated environments and they may not experience a negative effect of habitat fragmentation during expansion.…”

Using multi-scale behavioral investigations to inform wild pig (Sus scrofa) population management

“…Traditionally, these relationships have been assessed at the home-range scale [15]. However, more recent use of GPS collars provides the opportunity to assess movement paths and fine-scale movement behaviors within the home range [16,17,18]. To identify the direct impacts of foraging activities at perhaps the finest behavioral scale, it is necessary to analyze dietary preferences [19].…”