Roe deer's spatio-temporal response to novel environments

• Autor(a) principal: Almeida, Maria Beatriz Alves da Fonseca Samor de
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/25450
• topic: Capreolus capreolus; Reintroduction; Portugal; Home-range; Fire; Naïve environments; Movement rates

The European roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) is a relatively well studied ungulate species in central Europe and one of the most numerous. However, this information is not as extensive for the southern limit of the species distribution, which means that the factors that shape the roe deer distribution, as well as its ranging behaviour in a Mediterranean habitat, are relatively unknown. Since 2013, four roe deer reintroduction events have taken place in central Portugal with the aim to create a pool of wielding natural prey for the endangered Iberian wolf (Canis lupus signatus) aiming to decrease wolf attacks to livestock. Using GPS data from the tracked animals in the reintroduction project, the purpose of this study was to 1) analyse the home range establishment of the reintroduced populations of roe deer from 2013 until 2017; 2) examine the spatio-temporal responses of these populations to novel environments under fire disturbances occurring in the same four years period. Concerning the first objective the analysis showed that at release, animals tended to move away from the release point to then stabilize their movement rates. These animals maintained home ranges of a rather constant size, possibly due to availability of resources, or social fences. Regarding the second objective, animals in proximity to a fire event showed a sharp decrease in the distance between subsequent weekly home ranges, which mirror a fast response to the disturbance caused by fire, as well as shrinkage of their home range size. This thesis provides a valuable preliminary evaluation of the success of the reintroduction in central Portugal. Therefore, this study will help guide current and future management efforts regarding species reintroductions. Moreover, it represents an assessment, among the first of this kind with GPS telemetry, regarding the effect of disturbance effect on movement behaviour of a large herbivore, including fire events.