Unravelling the drivers of maned wolf activity along an elevational gradient in the Atlantic Forest, south‑eastern Brazil

The maned wolf, the largest canid in South America, was originally distributed in areas with open natural vegetation in the Cerrado biome, Chaco and Pampas regions. The dynamics of its distribution are, however, in flux, with populations declining at the southern limit of its distribution, and areas of apparent range expansion in Brazil. Although the maned wolf’s overall distribution is well documented, little is known about its smallest-scale landscape use. Here we used a novel approach, haracterising “favourable territories” for maned wolves using presence data and information on daily movement capacity. In this way, we used favourability distribution models to relate local landscape use by maned wolves to environmental drivers in the Serra da Mantiqueira, part of the core of the species distribution. Our results showed that the favourablity of territories for maned wolf activity increases with altitude, and with the proportion of coverage of upper montane vegetation refuges and of open habitats such as agricultural fields. Our results also show that the configuration of the environment with respect to topography is an important driver of the favourability of the landscape for maned wolf activity. Finally, we identified some human-wildlife conflicts in the surroundings of the protected area which could increase with increasing maned wolf populations. In conclusion, our results support the importance of maintaining the integrity of high-altitude open areas in the conservation of maned wolf habitat and provide useful data for maned wolf management at the core of its global current distribution. We highlight that this is the first study to use fuzzy logic tools at the local scale to analyze the favourability of territories for maned wolf activity in a highly favourable region along an elevational gradient.

We thank the Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiversidade (ICMBio—SISBIO license 16968-1) and Instituto Estadual de Florestas de Minas Gerais (IEF—license 151/11—Extensão I), the administration of both protected areas for logistical support during this study. WDC is supported by Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) through a postdoctoral scholarship (CAPES-PNPD). LMR was financially supported by the University of Aveiro (Department of Biology), CESAM (UID/AMB/50017), FCT/MEC through national funds, and the cofunding by the FEDER, within the PT2020 Partnership Agreement and Compete 2020. We also thank Clarissa Alves da Rosa for important contributions as a reviewer and Karen Mustin for the English review of this manuscript. Dr. David Romero was supported by a postdoctoral grant from the Graduate Academic Commission (CAP, from Spanish acronym Comisión Académica de Posgrado) of the Universidad de la República (2018–2020).