Human disturbance is the most limiting factor driving habitat selection of a large carnivore throughout Continental Europe

Ripari, Lucia (author), Premier, Joe (author), Belotti, Elisa (author), Bluhm, Hendrik (author), Breitenmoser-Würsten, Christine (author), Bufka, Luděk (author), Červený, Jaroslav (author), Drouet-Hoguet, Nolwenn (author), Fuxjäger, Christian (author), Jędrzejewski, Włodzimierz (author), Krofel, Miha (author)

Habitat selection is a multi-scale process driven by trade-offs between benefits, such as resource abundance, and disadvantages, such as the avoidance of risk. The latter includes human disturbances, to which large carnivores, with their large spatial requirements, are especially sensitive. We investigated the ecological processes underlying multi-scale habitat selection of a large carnivore, namely Eurasian lynx, across European landscapes characterized by different levels of human modification. Using a unique dataset of 125 lynx from 9 study sites across Europe, we compared used and available locations within landscape and home-range scales using a novel Mixed Effect randomForest approach, while considering environmental predictors as proxies for human disturbances and environmental resources. At the landscape scale, lynx avoided roads and human settlements, while at the home-range scale natural landscape features associated with shelter and prey abundance were more important. The results showed sex was of relatively low variable importance for lynx's general habitat selection behaviour. We found increasingly homogeneous responses across study sites with finer selection scales, suggesting that study site differences determined coarse selection, while utilization of resources at the finer selection scale was broadly universal. Thereby describing lynx's requirement, if not preference, for heterogeneous forests and shelter from human disturbances and implying that regional differences in coarse-scale selection are driven by availability rather than preference. These results provide crucial information for conserving this species in human-dominated landscapes, as well as for the first time, to our knowledge, generalising habitat selection behaviour of a large carnivore species at a continental scale.

• Language: English
• Keywords: habitat selection, human disturbance, large carnivore, multi-scale, carnivore ecology, landscape cohabitation
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: BF - Biotechnical Faculty
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Author Accepted Manuscript
• Submitted for review: 09.08.2021
• Article acceptance date: 31.12.2021
• Publication date: 10.01.2022
• Year: 2022
• Number of pages: 12 str.
• Numbering: Vol. 266, art. 109446
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-134401
• UDC: 630*15
• ISSN on article: 0006-3207
• DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2021.109446
• COBISS.SI-ID: 93255683
• Publication date in RUL: 13.01.2022

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Biological Conservation
• Shortened title: Biol. Conserv.
• Publisher: Applied Science Publishers
• ISSN: 0006-3207
• COBISS.SI-ID: 26719232

Licences

• License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
• Description: The most restrictive Creative Commons license. This only allows people to download and share the work for no commercial gain and for no other purposes.
• Licensing start date: 10.01.2022

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: evrazijski ris, Lynx lynx, izbira habitata, človeške motnje, ekologija zveri, sobivanje

Projects

• Funder: ARRS - Slovenian Research Agency
• Project number: N1-0163
• Name: Vpogled v medvrstne in znotrajvrstne interakcije med prostoživečimi mačkami v Evropi in Afriki

• Funder: ARRS - Slovenian Research Agency
• Project number: P4-0059
• Name: Gozd, gozdarstvo in obnovljivi gozdni viri