The influence of daylight regime on diurnal locomotor activity patterns of the European hare (Lepus europaeus) during summer

Schai-Braun, Stéphanie C.; Rödel, Heiko G.; Hackländer, Klaus

doi:10.1016/j.mambio.2012.07.004

Cited by 49 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 20 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Further, we compared diurnal movement activity for habitat generalists and specialists by testing the effects of time of day (numeric variable, in hours) in relation to the movement speeds within the same hour, in riparian thickets and agricultural land, separately. Since a non‐linear relationship between movement speed and time of day was expected with at least one activity peak, polynomials until the 7th order were used to model the data (Schai‐Braun, Rödel & Hackländer, ). Therefore, we applied “lmes” and the same modeling procedure described for habitat use.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Movement ecology of Afrotropical birds: Functional traits provide complementary insights to species identity

2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Effects of anthropogenic activities on habitats and species communities and populations are complex and vary across species depending on their ecological traits. Movement ecology may provide important insights into species’ responses to habitat structures and quality. We investigated how movement behavior across a human‐modified landscape depends on species identity and species traits, with particular focus on habitat specialization, feeding guilds, and dispersal behavior. We tracked 34 individuals of nine Afrotropical bird species during three years in an anthropogenic riparian landscape of East Africa. We investigated whether species’ functional traits predicted their habitat use and movement behavior better than species’ identities. Our results indicate that habitat specialists mainly occur in dense riparian thickets, while habitat generalists do occur in agricultural land. Home‐ranges of omnivorous habitat generalists are larger than of frugivorous and insectivorous generalists and omnivorous and insectivorous specialists. Movement speed was highest in settlement areas for all species, with activity peaks during morning and afternoon for habitat specialists. Our results reveal that functional traits and species identity provide complementary insights into responses of organisms to habitat structures and habitat quality.

show abstract

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Movement ecology of Afrotropical birds: Functional traits provide complementary insights to species identity

2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…We therefore used the Random Encounter Model (REM; Rowcliffe, Field, Turvey, & Carbone, ) to estimate the density D of mid‐sized and large herbivore prey as

D = \frac{y}{t} * \frac{π}{V r (2 + θ)}

, where y is the number of independent photographic events, t is camera trap days (ctd), V is average speed of animal movement, and r and θ are the camera trap detection distance (in kilometer) and angle (in radian). Animal movement speeds were taken from the published literature with GPS fix frequencies of 15 min for red deer (Pépin, Adrados, Mann, & Janeau, ) and wild boar (Spitz & Janeau, ) and 1 hr for brown hare (Schai‐Braun, Rödel, & Hackländer, ). As there is no published data for movement speed of wild goat, we used movement speed of a wild goat collared in our subalpine study area with GPS fix frequency of 2 hr (Ambarlı, Hüseyin unpublished data).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Foraging ecology of Eurasian lynx populations in southwest Asia: Conservation implications for a diet specialist

Mengüllüoğlu

Ambarlı

Berger

et al. 2018

Ecology and Evolution

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Intraspecific variation in key traits of widespread species can be hard to predict, if populations have been very little studied in most of the distribution range. Asian populations of the Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx), one of the most widespread felids worldwide, are such a case in point. We investigated the diet of Eurasian lynx from feces collected Mediterranean, mixed forest‐steppe, and subalpine ecosystems of Turkey. We studied prey preferences and functional responses using prey densities obtained from Random Encounter Modelling. Our analysis revealed that the main prey was brown hare (Lepus europaeus) in all three areas (78%–99% of biomass consumed) and lynx showed a strong preference for brown hare (Chesson's selectivity index, α = 0.90–0.99). Cannibalism contributed at least 5% in two study areas. The type II functional response of lynx populations in Turkey was similar to the Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis) and daily food intake in grams per lynx matched that of Canada lynx and Iberian lynx (Lynx pardinus), both lagomorph specialists, rather than those of Eurasian lynx from Europe. Therefore, lynx in Turkey may be better described as a lagomorph specialist even though it coexists with ungulate prey. We suggest that ungulate‐based foraging ecology of Eurasian lynx in Europe may be a recent adjustment to the availability of high densities of ungulates and cannot be representative for other regions like Turkey. The status of lagomorphs should become an essential component of conservation activities targeted at Eurasian lynx or when using this species as a flagship species for landscape preservation.

show abstract

“…Moreover, European hares' home ranges include resting areas used during the day and feeding areas frequented at night (Averianov et al 2003), although during summer, the species' active period is not restricted to the dark phase (Holley 2001;Schai-Braun et al 2012). Studies analysing day and night habitat preferences separately confirmed that habitat preferences differ widely depending on the European hares' activity state (Tapper and Barnes 1986;Smith et al 2004;Cardarelli et al 2011;Bertolino et al 2011b).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spring and autumn habitat preferences of active European hares (Lepus europaeus) in an agricultural area with low hare density

Schai-Braun

Weber²,

Hackländer

2012

Eur J Wildl Res

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The number of European brown hares (Lepus europaeus) has been declining throughout much of Europe since the 1960s. Consequently, many studies have focused on analysing habitat selection of European hares in order to improve the suitability of the habitat for this species. Habitat preferences of European hares are known to be affected by hare density, but most studies have been conducted in agricultural areas where hare densities were medium to high. Finding habitat preferences at high densities is difficult as most available habitats are occupied. In addition, in agricultural areas, field size might influence the hares' habitat selection because it affects the distribution and availability of certain habitat types. However, most studies relate to areas with large field sizes. In this study, we analysed the habitat preferences of European hares in spring and autumn during the activity period, in the early hours of the night, in an agricultural area with low hare density and small average field size using Chesson's electivity index. Moreover, we focused on the question whether two different habitat classifications varying in their specificity might cause contradictory results regarding European hares' habitat preferences. Our results show that in this agricultural area with low hare density, European hares avoided several habitat types which were preferred in other study areas with higher hare densities. Therefore, we assume that hare density has an influence on the species' habitat selection. In contrast, the small average field size of our study area seemed not to have an effect on hare habitat preference. Furthermore, by pooling habitat types into broader groups, substantial information was lost in some categories. Hence, for some categories, e.g. grassland or agricultural crop land, more detail might be needed than for others, such as urban areas, when analysing hares' habitat selection. In conclusion, our results imply that studies on habitat preferences have to be conducted in areas with low hare density to be able to gain knowledge on the species' habitat requirement and hereinafter improve the suitability of the habitat for this species.

show abstract

The influence of daylight regime on diurnal locomotor activity patterns of the European hare (Lepus europaeus) during summer

Cited by 49 publications

References 20 publications

Movement ecology of Afrotropical birds: Functional traits provide complementary insights to species identity

Movement ecology of Afrotropical birds: Functional traits provide complementary insights to species identity

Foraging ecology of Eurasian lynx populations in southwest Asia: Conservation implications for a diet specialist

Spring and autumn habitat preferences of active European hares (Lepus europaeus) in an agricultural area with low hare density

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About