We examined the long-term effects (28 years) of habitat loss and phenotypebased selective harvest on body mass, horn size, and horn shape of mouflon (Ovis gmelini musimon) in southern France. This ...population has experienced habitat deterioration (loss of 50.8% of open area) since its introduction in 1956 and unrestricted selective hunting of the largest horned males since 1973. Both processes are predicted to lead to a decrease in phenotype quality by decreasing habitat quality and by reducing the reproductive contribution of individuals carrying traits that are targeted by hunters. Body mass and body size of both sexes and horn measurements of males markedly decreased (by 3.4-38.3%) in all age classes from the 1970s. Lamb body mass varied in relation to the spatiotemporal variation of habitat closure within the hunting-free reserve, suggesting that habitat closure explains part of these changes. However, the fact that there was no significant spatial variation in body mass in the early part of the study, when a decline in phenotypic quality already had occurred, provided support for the influence of selective harvesting. We also found that the allometric relationship between horn breadth and horn length changed over the study period. For a given horn length, horn breadth was lower during the second part of the study. This result, as well as changes in horn curve diameter, supports the interpretation that selective harvesting of males based on their horn configuration had evolutionary consequences for horn shape, since this phenotypic trait is less likely to be affected by changes in habitat characteristics. Moreover, males required more time (approximately four years) to develop a desirable trophy, suggesting that trophy hunting favors the reproductive contribution of animals with slow-growing horns. Managers should exploit hunters' desire for trophy males to finance management strategies which ensure a balance between the population and its environment. However, for long-term sustainable exploitation, harvest strategy should also ensure that selectively targeted males are allowed to contribute genetically to the next generations.
Lay Summary Noise has widespread effects on wildlife. To fully understand how animals respond to noise, refined approaches to measurement of noise are needed. We advocate for the simultaneously ...recording of noise and animal behavior. With recordings of noise, researchers will be able to measure a suite of properties of noise, including amplitude, spectral and temporal features. This will contribute to the development of new questions regarding the effects of noise on animal behavior.Understanding how organisms respond to any environment requires a full characterization of how the environment varies over time and space. A rapidly growing literature on the influence of anthropogenic noise on wildlife, and in particular animal communication, has yet to fully describe this variation. Point measurements of amplitude, often separated in time and space from animal observations, and qualitative descriptions of noise inadequately capture variation, a bias that may limit deeper understanding of noise effects on wildlife. We suggest that a greater focus on temporal and spatial heterogeneity in noise amplitude, as well as additional properties of noise, including onset, consistency, regularity, and frequency range, is critical for continued advancement in this emerging field. Recordings of noise using calibrated systems allow researchers to measure a suite of noise properties simultaneously with animal observations. Not only will such an approach improve quantification of single metrics of noise, the noise data collected may then be analyzed in a multivariate framework, which will help us understand the full range of behavioral and physiological adjustments animals may make and their broader implications for wildlife health and conservation.
The balance between food and perceived predation risk has been revealed as one of the primary drivers of animal habitat selection. However, few studies have investigated how spatiotemporal scales and ...movement/activity patterns shape responses to this food/cover trade-off while accounting for individual characteristics (e.g. sex) and for variation in predation risk (e.g. hunting) and in resource abundance/quality. We hence studied temporal changes in habitat selection of 30 GPS-collared females and 15 males of Mediterranean mouflon, Ovis gmelini musimon×Ovis sp., at two scales, i.e. 48h home range selection within a subpopulation area (broad scale) and choice of movement steps (defined as the linear segment between two consecutive locations) according to activity state (fine scale), in southern France. During the hunting-free/food-abundant period, males selected at both scales the foraging habitats providing the best conditions for optimizing their future reproductive success and only selected areas perceived as safe during inactive steps. During the corresponding lambing period, and at both scales, females selected areas perceived as safe that should optimize lamb survival. They switched to the best foraging habitats only when lambs were weaned and only for active steps. By contrast, during hunting, when food was also scarce, both sexes selected home ranges with high proportions of the habitats perceived as safe, in which they performed all their activities. This result suggested that risk avoidance exceeded all the other individual and environmental factors in the hierarchy of the determinants of habitat selection during the hunting period. Coupling scale-specific habitat selection and activity patterns was hence decisive in disclosing how individuals fulfil their specific needs under seasonally changing levels of habitat attributes important for fitness.
•We studied sex-specific habitat selection in mouflon at two spatiotemporal scales.•We examined responses to variation in perceived predation risk, food and weather.•Both sexes selected cover during the hunting/food-restricted period at both scales.•Sex-, scale and activity-specific adjustments rather occurred during spring-summer.•Variations in constraints affecting fitness involve changes in habitat selection.
In the early twentieth century, European mouflon was introduced in Croatia, while all introductions in Slovenia occurred in the 1950s and 1960s. Although majority of the introductions were ...historically documented, occasional cases involving individuals of unknown origin have likely contributed to a mixed genetic pool in established colonies. To understand the impact of past management and the potential founder effects on contemporary mouflon populations, we performed the first genetic study of the species in these two countries. Utilising next-generation sequencing of both mitochondrial control region (mtDNA CR) and major histocompatibility complex (MHC DRB exon 2), our study scrutinises the genetic diversity and structure of these populations. Additionally, the origins and genetic variability of mouflon in Croatia and Slovenia were compared with reference samples from Czech Republic, Sardinia (Italy), and Corsica (France). The mtDNA haplotype network showed that the majority of mouflon from Slovenia are closely related to mouflon from Sardinia, and only few shared the same haplotypes with mouflon from Croatia. Some mouflon from mainland Croatia share identical or closely related haplotypes with individuals from the initially established population in this country (on the Brijuni Archipelago), while others belong to a distinctly different cluster. We found five MHC alleles previously reported for mouflon in Europe, and genetic diversity was similar in both studied countries. We observed an excess of the Ovar-DRB1*07012/*07012 genotype, and only a few individuals exhibited the advantageous genotypes for parasite infection (Ovar-DRB1*0114 allele and Ovar-DRB1*0324/*0114 genotype). Genetic data showed that the population origins are generally in agreement with the written historical records, although we found signals of release of extra individuals into certain colonies.
Gastro-intestinal nematodes, especially Haemonchus contortus, are widespread pathogenic parasites of small ruminants. Studying their spatial genetic structure is as important as studying host genetic ...structure to fully understand host-parasite interactions and transmission patterns. For parasites having a simple life cycle (e.g., monoxenous parasites), gene flow and spatial genetic structure are expected to strongly rely on the socio-spatial behavior of their hosts. Based on five microsatellite loci, we tested this hypothesis for H. contortus sampled in a wild Mediterranean mouflon population (Ovis gmelini musimon × Ovis sp.) in which species- and environment-related characteristics have been found to generate socio-spatial units. We nevertheless found that their parasites had no spatial genetic structure, suggesting that mouflon behavior was not enough to limit parasite dispersal in this study area and/or that other ecological and biological factors were involved in this process, for example other hosts, the parasite life cycle, or the study area history.
1. Recent advances in animal ecology have enabled identification of certain mechanisms that lead to the emergence of territories and home ranges from movements considered as unbounded. Among them, ...memory and familiarity have been identified as key parameters in cognitive maps driving animal navigation, but have been only recently used in empirical analyses of animal movements. 2. At the same time, the influence of landscape features on movements of numerous species and on space division in territorial animals has been highlighted. Despite their potential as exocentric information in cognitive maps and as boundaries for home ranges, few studies have investigated their role in the design of home ranges of non-territorial species. 3. Using step selection analyses, we assessed the relative contribution of habitat characteristics, familiarity preferences and linear landscape features in movement step selection of 60 GPS-collared Mediterranean mouflon Ovis gmelini musimon × Ovis sp. monitored in southern France. Then, we evaluated the influence of these movement-impeding landscape features on the design of home ranges by testing for a non-random distribution of these behavioural barriers within sections of space differentially used by mouflon. 4. We reveal that familiarity and landscape features are key determinants of movements, relegating to a lower level certain habitat constraints (e.g. food/cover trade-off) that we had previously identified as important for this species. Mouflon generally avoid crossing both anthropogenic (i.e. roads, tracks and hiking trails) and natural landscape features (i.e. ridges, talwegs and forest edges) while moving in the opposite direction, preferentially toward familiar areas. These specific behaviours largely depend on the relative position of each movement step regarding distance to the landscape features or level of familiarity in the surroundings. We also revealed cascading consequences on the design of home ranges in which most landscape features were excluded from cores and relegated to the peripheral areas. 5. These results provide crucial information on landscape connectivity in a context of marked habitat fragmentation. They also call for more research on the role of landscape features in the emergence of home ranges in non-territorial species using recent methodological developments bridging the gap between movements and space use patterns.
Lay Summary Behavioral adjustments may allow animals to buffer against the hottest summer conditions. By selecting home ranges providing thermal cover and modifying fine-scale habitat selection above ...a temperature threshold, Mediterranean mouflon experience ambient temperatures that increase more slowly than temperatures recorded at the closest weather station, showing that these adjustments contribute to buffer them against the hottest conditions. Sex-specific strategies are revealed and suggest that smaller females constrained by lamb rearing could be more affected by hot summer conditions than larger males.In the context of global warming, investigating how animals buffer against the hottest conditions is a crucial issue. We focused on habitat selection in a French Mediterranean mouflon population during 2010-2012 summers. Using locations and temperatures recorded on GPS-collared individuals, we assessed thermal cover provided by different habitats and analyzed sex- and scale-specific habitat selection and its thermal consequences for mouflon. At the home range scale, females (n = 26) avoided unsafe plateaux and selected steep refuges, trading off thermal cover with better conditions for lamb survival. Larger males (n = 18), not constrained by young rearing and expected to respond more strongly than smaller females to hot conditions, rather selected forests on plateaux providing thermal cover. In terms of movements, both sexes selected forests during hottest days. Males also took advantage of food and thermal cover provided by moorlands on plateaux until twilight, whereas females traded off food and thermal cover with refuges. Thermal cover significantly influenced habitat selection when temperature at the closest weather station exceeded 17.1 degree C (95% confidence interval = 14.9-19.7) in males and 15.5 degree C (95% confidence interval = 13.9-16.5) in females. Above these thresholds, ambient temperatures experienced by mouflon increased more slowly than temperatures at the weather station (males: 0.77 degree C 95% confidence interval = 0.74-0.79 per 1 degree C rise at the weather station, females: 0.75 degree C 95% confidence interval = 0.73-0.76) and more slowly than below these thresholds (males: 0.89 degree C 95% confidence interval = 0.85-0.93, females: 0.94 degree C 95% confidence interval = 0.89-0.98). These findings suggested that habitat selection contributes to buffer mouflon against summer conditions but raised questions on energetic and fitness costs in areas where summer temperatures are predicted to increase further.
We assessed the effects of prescribed burning and cutting on mouflon (Ovis gmelini musimon × Ovis sp.) spring habitat using an experimental design (17.28 ha) of 2 burned, 2 cut, and 2 untreated plots ...within a homogeneous stand dominated by heather (Erica cinerea and Calluna vulgaris). Overall, we found a shift in treated plots from ligneous species to herbaceous species with high digestive and energetic values for mouflon. We also found a consistently higher number of mouflon feeding on these treated habitats compared to untreated plots. Such effects were still apparent 4 years after habitat modifications. Our approaches could be used by managers to improve and maintain the range of mouflon populations experiencing habitat loss (e.g., woody plant encroachment) and for which the condition of an animal has often a high economical value through trophy hunting.
Studies on habitat-performance relationships that require joint data on fitness and habitat use are still scarce in long-lived species. Using data from a southern French population of Mediterranean ...mouflon (Ovis gmelini musimon x Ovis sp.), we proposed an original approach for gaining information on this relationship by combining a fitness proxy (i. e., carcass mass) collected on harvested rams (n = 257) with knowledge on habitat use obtained from other rams (n = 13) fitted with Global Positioning System (GPS) collars. We first evaluated habitat characteristics encountered by harvested animals in hypothesized home ranges corresponding to circles centered on harvest locations. We set circle size to equal an average ram home range. We found that the carcass mass of harvested individuals decreased with aspect diversity (— 16.0% from home ranges with the lowest to the highest diversity), mean slope (— 9.3% between flat home ranges and steep ones), and decreasing abundance of open areas (— 11.3% between the most and the least open areas). We then tested the robustness of our results by simulating circles with variable sizes and whose centers were randomly located around each harvest location. We found similar results confirming that some habitat characteristics that may be related to resource abundance and spatial structure were important drivers of ram carcass mass in this population. Finally, we showed that simulated circles of variable sizes and centered on GPS locations captured well the habitat composition of home ranges of GPS-collared rams. Combining different sources of information could hence allow drawing robust inference on key habitats in terms of performance, which is of particular interest when including a spatial component in wildlife management and conservation plans and deciding on appropriate habitat improvements.
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