Environmental field conditions and sampling effort affect the molecular identification success of livestock predators

• Autor(a) principal: Lino, Sofia
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Outros Autores: Lino, Ana, Fernandes, Joana M., Ferreira, Eduardo, Fonseca, Carlos, Aliácar, Sara, Cadete, Duarte, Rosalino, Luís Miguel, Carvalho, João
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10451/58295

For centuries, wolf depredation on livestock has triggered human–wildlife conficts throughout Europe. Free-ranging dogs, however, are increasingly abundant and may also act as predators of livestock herds. This calls for combined eforts aimed at identifying the causes of depredation events and optimizing the procedures towards predators’ identifcation. Here, we analysed 56 livestock depredation events in central Portugal, an area where confict between wolves and human populations takes place. We estimated the mean minimum sampling efort (number of swabs) required to detect at least one potential predator and examined how extrinsic factors (i.e. time, meteorological conditions and vegetation cover) drive sample deg radation and predator identifcation success. Free-ranging dogs were the only putative predator detected in most attacks (66%). Results indicate that a minimum of three swabs are needed to detect at least one predator, but using at least four would substantially increase the detection rate. We found that the longer the interval between an attack and sample collection and the higher the local humidity, the lower is the probability of identifcation success. On the other hand, higher tempera tures and precipitation levels seem to be associated with a higher probability of success. The unexpected positive efect of precipitation may be linked to specifc environmental contexts (i.e. higher precipitation levels in colder weather may still favour sample conservation). As identifcation success depends on time and weather conditions, the time span between a depredation event and sample collection should be reduced whenever possible, and sufcient samples should be collected to ensure an adequate detection success