Migration in geographic and ecological space by a large herbivore
2017
Peters, Wibke | Hebblewhite, Mark | Mysterud, Atle | Spitz, Derek | Focardi, Stefano | Urbano, Ferdinando | Morellet, Nicolas | Heurich, Marco | Kjellander, Petter | Linnell, John D.C. | Cagnacci, Francesca | Department of Ecosystem and Conservation Science, Wildlife Biology Program ; University of Montana | Research and Innovation Centre, Biodiversity and Molecular Ecology Department ; Edmund Mach Foundation (FEM) | Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES) ; Department of Biosciences [Oslo] ; Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences [Oslo] ; University of Oslo (UiO)-University of Oslo (UiO)-Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences [Oslo] ; University of Oslo (UiO)-University of Oslo (UiO) | Istituto Superiore per la Protezione e la Ricerca Ambientale (ISPRA) | Unité de recherche Comportement et Ecologie de la Faune Sauvage (CEFS) ; Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA) | Department of Conservation and Research ; Bavarian Forest National Park | Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources, Wildlife Ecology and Management ; University of Freiburg | Grimsö Wildlife Research Station ; Department of Ecology ; Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences = Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet (SLU)-Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences = Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet (SLU) | Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA) | Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Department ; Harvard University | This paper was conceived and written within the collaborative EURODEER project (paper no. 006 of the EURODEER series; www.eurodeer.org). The co-authors are grateful to all members for their support for the initiative. The EURODEER spatial database is hosted by Fondazione Edmund Mach. The GPS data collection of the Fondazione Edmund Mach was supported by the Autonomous Province of Trento under grant number 3479 to FC (BECOCERWI-Behavioural Ecology of Cervids in Relation to Wildlife Infections). W. Peters and F. Cagnacci thank the Wildlife and Forest Service of the Autonomous Province of Trento and the Hunting Association of Trento Province (ACT) for support and help during captures. Financial support for GPS data collection in the Bavarian Forest was provided by the EU-program INTERREG IV (EFRE Ziel 3) and the Bavarian Forest National Park Administration. The Swedish study was supported by grants from the private foundation of "Marie Claire Cronstedts Minne," the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, and the Swedish Association for Hunting and Wildlife Management. The Norwegian data collection was funded by the Norwegian Environment Agency and the county administration of Buskerud county. J. Linnell was also funded by the Research Council of Norway (grant 251112). A. Mysterud and W. Peters greatly acknowledge the support of the Centre for Advanced Study in Oslo, Norway that funded and hosted the research project ("Climate effects on harvested large mammal populations") during the academic year of 2015-2016. Funding was also provided by the University of Montana and NASA grant number NNX11AO47G to M. Hebblewhite | ANR-14-CE02-0017,EUROENET,Plasticité phénotypique d'un grand herbivore le long de gradients environnementaux: EUropean ROe deer NETwork(2014)
Partial migration, when only part of the population migrates seasonally while the other part remains resident on the shared range, is the most common form of migration in ungulates. Migration is often defined by spatial separation of seasonal ranges and consequently, classification of individuals as migrants or residents is usually only based on geographic criteria. However, the underlying mechanism for migration is hypothesized to be movement in response to spatiotemporal resource variability and thus, migrants are assumed to travel an “ecological distance” (ED) or shift their realized ecological niches. While ecological and geographic distanc- es should be related, their relationship may depend on landscape heterogeneity. Here, we tested the utility of ecological niche theory to both classify migratory individuals and to understand the underlying ecological factors for migratory behavior. We developed an integrative approach combining measures in geographic and ecological niche space and used this to classify and explain migratory behavior of 71 annual roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) movement trajectories in five European study areas. First, to assess the utility of the ED concept for classifying migra- tory behavior, we tested whether roe deer sought the same ecological conditions year- round or moved to different ecological conditions by measuring the annual ED travelled and the seasonal niche overlap using multivariate statistics. Comparing methods to classify migrants and resi- dents based on geographic and ecological niche space, we found that migratory roe deer switched between seasons both in geographic and in ecological dimensions. Second, we tested which seasonal ecological factors separated resident from migrant niches using discriminant analysis and which broad- scale determinants (e.g., spatiotemporal forage variation and population density) predicted migration probability using generalized linear models. Our results indicated that factors describing forage and topographic variability discriminated seasonal migrant from resident niches. Determinants for predicting migration probability included the temporal varia- tion (seasonality) and also the spatial variability of forage patches. Last, we also found sugges- tive evidence for a positive relationship between population density and migration probability. By applying the ecological niche concept to the study of partial migration in ungulates, our work underlines that partial migration is a form of behavioral plasticity.
اظهر المزيد [+] اقل [-]الكلمات المفتاحية الخاصة بالمكنز الزراعي (أجروفوك)
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تم تزويد هذا السجل من قبل Institut national de la recherche agronomique