PARENT SESSION
Contributed Oral Session 101: Mammalian Herbivory
Wednesday, August 10, 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM, Meeting Room 520 A, Level 5, Palais des congrès de Montréal
Spatial behavior: Paths of food search in female roe deer (Capreolus capreolus).
Said, Sonia*,1, Pellerin, Maryline2, Le Corre, Mael3, Widmer, Olivier4, 1 ONCFS CNERA CS, Bar le Duc, France2 CNRS, Beauvoir Sur Niort, France3 CNRS, Beauvoir Sur Niort, France4 ONCFS CNERA CS, Bar le Duc, France
ABSTRACT- The way roe deer exploit resources within their home range is not well known because of cryptic behaviour and dense habitat. Furthermore, radio tracking locations used to estimate home ranges are insufficient to obtain animal paths. However, the appearance of GPS (Global Positioning System) collars permits a greater number of positions and therefore the determination of movement patterns. Several methods have been developed to characterize habitat structure and animal movements. One of these, the First Passage Time (Fauchald and Tveraa 2003), can be used as a measurement of search effort along a path and is defined as the time required for an animal to cross a circle with a given radius. We applied this analysis to GPS locations of roe deer females in Chize and Trois-Fontaines Forests (France) to understand how animals change their movement patterns in relation to the environment (autumn 2003: N = 2+5, and spring-summer 2004: N = 9+9). Our results revealed circles of intensive searching measuring 10 to 100 meters, and for every female the majority of zones appeared in all paths. Furthermore, preliminary results about animal activity in these circles, provided by GPS collars, suggested that for some females these were rest zones rather than zones of high activity. However, further analyses are necessary and in progress. Intersections of detected zones with vegetation , i.e. plant species and biomass and percent of habitat opening, are still in analysis. These additional results will be presented during the meeting.
Key words: Roe deer, movement, First passage time