How key habitat features influence large terrestrial carnivore movements: waterholes and African lions in a semi-arid savanna of north-western Zimbabwe |
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Authors: | Marion Valeix Andrew J Loveridge Zeke Davidson Hillary Madzikanda Hervé Fritz David W Macdonald |
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Institution: | 1.Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, Zoology Department,Oxford University,Abingdon,United Kingdom;2.Laboratory of Evolutionary Biometry and Biology,University of Lyon, CNRS University Claude Bernard Lyon 1 UMR 5558,Villeurbanne cedex,France;3.Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority,Causeway, Harare,Zimbabwe |
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Abstract: | Within a landscape where prey has an aggregated distribution, predators can take advantage of the spatial autocorrelation
of prey density and intensify their search effort in areas of high prey density by using area-restricted search behaviour.
In African arid and semi-arid savannas, large herbivores tend to aggregate around scarce water sources. We tested the hypothesis
that water sources are a key determinant of habitat selection and movement patterns of large free-ranging predators in such
savannas, using the example of the African lion. We used data from 19 GPS radio-collared lions in Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe.
Maps of lions’ trajectories showed that waterholes are key loci on the lions’ route-maps. Compositional analyses revealed
that lions significantly selected for areas located within 2 km of a waterhole. In addition, analysis of lions’ night paths
showed that when lions are close to a waterhole (<2 km), they move at lower speed, cover shorter distances per night (both
path length and net displacement) and follow a more tortuous path (higher turning angle, lower straightness index and higher
fractal dimension) than when they are further from a waterhole. Hence, our results strongly suggest that lions adopt area-restricted
searching in the vicinity of waterholes, and reduce their search effort to minimize the time spent far from a waterhole. They
provide an illustration of how key habitat features that determine the dispersion of prey (e.g. waterholes in this study)
have an influence on the spatial ecology and movement patterns of terrestrial predators. |
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