Smartphone app reveals that lynx avoid human recreationists on local scale, but not home range scale

Thorsen, Neri H.; Bischof, Richard; Mattisson, Jenny; Hofmeester, Tim R.; Linnell, John D. C.; Oddén, John

doi:10.1038/s41598-022-08468-7

Cited by 10 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…In addition, responses by large carnivores to human pressures also might vary across spatial scales of habitat use (e.g., establishment of home ranges in the wider landscape vs. use of areas within a home range; Mayor et al 2009). For example, several studies have found carnivores to avoid human-caused mortality risks primarily at broader scales, while selecting mainly for higher resource availability at finer scales (Ripari et al 2022;Thorsen et al 2022). A better understanding of how human pressure shapes large carnivore habitat use across scales could provide important insights into their adaptive capacity and reveal opportunities and limitations for landscapes of coexistence where large carnivores and people co-occur sustainably (Oriol-Cotterill et al 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prerequisites for coexistence: human pressure and refuge habitat availability shape continental-scale habitat use patterns of a large carnivore

et al. 2023

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Context Adjustments in habitat use by large carnivores can be a key factor facilitating their coexistence with people in shared landscapes. Landscape composition might be a key factor determining how large carnivores can adapt to occurring alongside humans, yet broad-scale analyses investigating adjustments of habitat use across large gradients of human pressure and landscape composition are lacking. Objectives Here, we investigate adjustments in habitat use by Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx) in response to varying availability of refuge habitats (i.e., forests and rugged terrain) and human landscape modification. Methods Using a large tracking dataset including 434 individuals from seven populations, we assess functional responses in lynx habitat use across two spatial scales, testing for variation by sex, daytime, and season. Results We found that lynx use refuge habitats more intensively with increasing landscape modification across spatial scales, selecting forests most strongly in otherwise open landscapes and rugged terrain in mountainous regions. Moreover, higher forest availability enabled lynx to place their home ranges in more human-modified landscapes. Human pressure and refuge habitat availability also shaped temporal patterns of lynx habitat use, with lynx increasing refuge habitat use and reducing their use of human-modified areas during periods of high exposure (daytime) or high vulnerability (postnatal period) to human pressure. Conclusions Our findings suggest a remarkable adaptive capacity of lynx towards human pressure and underline the importance of refuge habitats across scales for enabling coexistence between large carnivores and people. More broadly, we highlight that the composition of landscapes determines how large carnivores can adapt to human pressure and thus play an important role shaping large carnivore habitat use and distributions.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prerequisites for coexistence: human pressure and refuge habitat availability shape continental-scale habitat use patterns of a large carnivore

et al. 2023

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“…To check for the reliability of these two categories in the field, we compared the daily attendance of hikers (number of hikers recorded on the trail) between 03:00 UTC and 23:00 UTC and the hour of first arrival for both temporal disturbance levels using an eco-counter (PYRO sensor Eco-Compteur, www.eco-compteur.com; 90 cm above ground) located on Armenaz trail (45°37'18.60" N, 6°13'2.53" E), on a subset of the study period ( 2016 Potential spatial exposure to hikers disturbance was evaluated within each female chamois home range using frequentation rates of the trails extracted from Strava Global Heatmap (Strava, 2022;www.strava.com, download date: 2022/03/09, data from the two previous years, see also Courbin et al, 2022 for a similar approach on this study site). Strava heatmap provides a value ranging from 0 for no attendance to 255 for the highest attendance for each pixel of the map and is a good proxy of relative human frequentation (Supporting information 2, see also Thorsen et al, 2022). The lowest value recorded for a trail pixel in our study site was 51, so we defined frequentation classes according to the quantiles of the [51; 255] distribution (i.e.…”

Section: Data Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Potential spatial exposure to hikers disturbance was evaluated within each female chamois home range using frequentation rates of the trails extracted from Strava Global Heatmap (Strava, 2022;www.strava.com, download date: 2022/03/09, data from the two previous years, see also Courbin et al, 2022 for a similar approach on this study site). Strava heatmap provides a value ranging from 0 for no attendance to 255 for the highest attendance for each pixel of the map and is a good proxy of relative human frequentation (Supporting information 2, see also Thorsen et al, 2022). The lowest value recorded for a trail pixel in our study site was 51, so we defined frequentation classes according to the quantiles of the [51; 255] distribution (i.e.…”

Section: Data Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Too hot or too disturbed? Temperatures more than hikers affect circadian activity of females in northern chamois

Thel

Garel

Marchand

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Though non–lethal, recreational activities often result in a spatial and/or temporal shift of activity in a large range of species because they are perceived as a risk. With the concurrent development of outdoors activities and the increase of temperatures due to climate change in mountainous ecosystems, mountain species face an increasing pressure in terms of managing their activity pattern to both limit risk exposure and reduce thermal stress. In this context, we investigated how female northern chamois adjust their summer circadian activity to spatio–temporal variations of both temperature and hikers disturbance. We found that chamois behaviour was more affected by high temperatures than by hikers disturbance. During the hottest days, they shifted their activity peak earlier in the morning (50 minutes earlier; and to a lesser extent, later in the evening), and were more active at night (+ 21.5% approx.) than during daytime (− 10.10% approx.). Their global daily activity was higher (+ 4.54% approx.) during the hottest than coldest days owing to a significant increase of activity level during the activity peaks. Conversely, hikers disturbance had almost no effect on activity peaks of chamois most likely due to a temporal mismatch with hikers arrival and departure. Spatial and temporal disturbance had also a weak effect on chamois activity level, except when considered together and during the hottest days (i.e. the most disturbed conditions) exacerbating the temporal report of activity at night those days. Low tolerance of chamois to hikers presence might have led to the pattern reported with a similar response whatever the intensity of encounter risk. These results might also suggest that behavioural changes buffering animals from high temperature (relocation into refuge areas) and/or from hikers presence (moving away temporarily from trails) allow them to marginally modify their activity pattern. In the context of ongoing socio–environmental changes, these findings stress the importance of conserving habitats providing both shelter against summer heat and human disturbance to mitigate their potential detrimental consequences.

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“…This newly-developed index, ranging from 0 (no outdoor activity in the 20x20-m cell) to 1 (very high outdoor activity in the cell), is a single static representation of all aggregated, public activities uploaded to the Strava App. Importantly, the spatial patterns in outdoor activities do not change across years (23), making the index an effective representation of the volume of human activity in a given area (see 16 for further details on data collection, processing, and validation). The spatial distribution of the COI at the study site is shown in Figure 1.…”

Section: Human Mobility Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Bridging human mobility to animal activity

Robira

Corradini

Ossi

et al. 2022

Proceedings of the 2nd ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on Animal Movement Ecology and Human Mobility

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In the Anthropocene, findings on animal behavioral flexibility in response to anthropogenic changes are accumulating: human presence and activity affect the distribution, movement, activity rhythm, physiology, and diet of animal species. However, conclusions are limited by the lack of simultaneous quantitative data on both the animal and human side. Hence, the dynamic link between animal behavior and human activity and mobility is often poorly estimated. Based on long-term monitoring of a wild bear population in the Trentino region (10 bears monitored from 2006 to 2019; 20 bear-years) combined with human mobility data (Cumulative Outdoor activity Index, derived from the Strava Global Heatmap) and tourist count records, we investigated how spatial behavior and activity rhythms of bears change with variations in experienced human disturbance. We found that bears were mainly nocturnal and that, on an annual scale, nocturnality was associated with movement behavior, but both were independent of experienced human disturbance. Furthermore, nocturnality tended to increase in periods of more intense exploitation of outdoor areas by humans. Overall, these preliminary findings show that bears exhibit a notable behavioral flexibility to minimize their exposure to human presence. Through the application of different sources of human activity data, this work showcases that the integration of high resolution animal movement data with dynamic data on human mobility is crucial to meaningfully catch wildlife responses to anthropisation.

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Smartphone app reveals that lynx avoid human recreationists on local scale, but not home range scale

Cited by 10 publications

References 58 publications

Prerequisites for coexistence: human pressure and refuge habitat availability shape continental-scale habitat use patterns of a large carnivore

Prerequisites for coexistence: human pressure and refuge habitat availability shape continental-scale habitat use patterns of a large carnivore

Too hot or too disturbed? Temperatures more than hikers affect circadian activity of females in northern chamois

Bridging human mobility to animal activity

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