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Spatio-temporal hotspots of satellite-tracked arctic foxes reveal a large detection range in a mammalian predator - PubMed

  • ️Thu Jan 01 2015

Spatio-temporal hotspots of satellite-tracked arctic foxes reveal a large detection range in a mammalian predator

Sandra Lai et al. Mov Ecol. 2015.

Abstract

Background: The scale at which animals perceive their environment is a strong fitness determinant, yet few empirical estimates of animal detection ranges exist, especially in mammalian predators. Using daily Argos satellite tracking of 26 adult arctic foxes (Vulpes lagopus) during a single winter in the High Canadian Arctic, we investigated the detection range of arctic foxes by detecting hotspots of fox activity on the sea ice.

Results: While maintaining territories in the tundra, these solitary foragers occasionally used the sea ice where they sometimes formed spatio-temporal hotspots, likely scavenging on marine mammal carcasses. We detected 35 movements by 13 individuals forming five hotspots. Foxes often traveled more than 10 km, and up to 40 km, to reach hotspots, which lasted one-two weeks and could gather up to 12 individuals. The likelihood of a fox joining a hotspot was neither influenced by its distance from the hotspot nor by the distance of its home range to the coast.

Conclusions: Observed traveling distances may indicate a high detection range in arctic foxes, and our results suggest their ability to detect food sources on the sea ice from their terrestrial home range. While revealing a wide knowledge gap regarding resource detection abilities in mammalian predators, our study provides estimates of detection range useful for interpreting and modeling animal movements. It also allows a better understanding of foraging behavior and navigation capacity in terrestrial predators.

Keywords: Argos satellite tracking; Detection range; Dynamic Brownian bridge movement model; Scavenging; Sea ice; Spatio–temporal hotspots; Vulpes lagopus.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1

Estimated population–level use of the sea ice by arctic foxes using dynamic Brownian bridge movement models. Estimations for the month of a December, b January and c February, with black arrows indicating the spatio–temporal hotspots detected on the sea ice of Navy Board Inlet (Nunavut, Canada) during winter 2010–2011. The 25, 50, 75 and 99 % cumulative probability contours are shown in blue, with the darkest shades indicating the highest probabilities. Areas where more than 3 foxes occurred are delimited by a red line. Individual home ranges on Bylot Island are delimited by black lines. d Estimation for the month of November, when no hotspot was detected (shown for reference). Note that the coastline can appear as a relatively highly used area due to the back-and-forth crossing of foxes from their inland range to the sea ice, and to the home ranges located along the coast

Fig. 2
Fig. 2

Fox locations for five spatio–temporal hotspots (a-e: Hotspot–1 to Hotspot–5) on the sea ice. Histograms show the chronology of arctic fox presence for each hotspot detected on the sea ice of Navy Board Inlet (Nunavut, Canada) during winter 2010–2011. Individual foxes are labeled with a letter (M for males and F for females) followed by their identity number. Crosses indicate the fox home range centers, with colored crosses for foxes detected at hotspots. The study area is depicted in dark grey. A star in (c ) shows where Pond Inlet hunters had stored some whale meat, with the dashed line indicating the straight route from the whale cache to Pond Inlet

Fig. 3
Fig. 3

Frequency distribution of distances traveled by foxes to reach spatio–temporal hotspots on the sea ice. The 35 movements shown were performed by 13 arctic foxes moving to five spatio–temporal hotspots on the sea ice of Navy Board Inlet (Nunavut, Canada) during winter 2010–2011

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