Fear or food - Abundance of red fox in relation to occurrence of lynx and WolfShow others and affiliations
2017 (English)In: Scientific Reports, E-ISSN 2045-2322, Vol. 7, no 1, article id 9059
Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
Apex predators may affect mesopredators through intraguild predation and/or supply of carrion from their prey, causing a trade-off between avoidance and attractiveness. We used wildlife triangle snow-tracking data to investigate the abundance of red fox (Vulpes vulpes) in relation to lynx (Lynx lynx) and wolf (Canis lupus) occurrence as well as land composition and vole (Microtus spp.) density. Data from the Swedish wolf-monitoring system and VHF/GPS-collared wolves were used to study the effect of wolf pack size and time since wolf territory establishment on fox abundance. Bottom-up processes were more influential than top-down effects as the proportion of arable land was the key indicator of fox abundance at the landscape level. At this spatial scale, there was no effect of wolf abundance on fox abundance, whereas lynx abundance had a positive effect. In contrast, at the wolf territory level there was a negative effect of wolves on fox abundance when including detailed information of pack size and time since territory establishment, whereas there was no effect of lynx abundance. This study shows that different apex predator species may affect mesopredator abundance in different ways and that the results may be dependent on the spatiotemporal scale and resolution of the data. © 2017 The Author(s).
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
London: Nature Publishing Group , 2017. Vol. 7, no 1, article id 9059
Keywords [en]
animal model, arable land, Canis lupus, fear, landscape, Lynx lynx, Microtus, monitoring, nonhuman, predator, species, Vulpes vulpes, wildlife
National Category
Zoology
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:hh:diva-35379DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-08927-6ISI: 000408158000002Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85028034661OAI: oai:DiVA.org:hh-35379DiVA, id: diva2:1158438
2017-11-202017-11-202022-09-15Bibliographically approved