Elsevier

Biological Conservation

Volume 228, December 2018, Pages 233-240
Biological Conservation

Resource selection in an apex predator and variation in response to local landscape characteristics

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2018.10.022Get rights and content

Highlights

  • We characterized patterns of habitat selection of an apex predator, the jaguar (n = 40, n = 87,376 individual locations)

  • The jaguar shows different patterns of habitat selection, demonstrating an ability to use a variety of habitat conditions

  • This plasticity may allow jaguars to adjust their behavior according to land use changes

Abstract

Habitat loss and fragmentation represent major threats for the conservation of apex predators, such as the jaguar (Panthera onca). Investigating species' resource selection behavior in response to landscape alteration is critical for developing relevant conservation management plans. The jaguar is found across a variety of habitats with different gradients of human disturbance, making them a good candidate to study how apex predators respond to increasing intensity of human land use. We developed resource selection models to characterize patterns of jaguar resource selection at two different spatial scales, home range (coarse) and foraging scale (fine). This analysis was based on the largest existing GPS-location dataset for jaguars (n = 40 individuals, n = 87,376 locations), spanning the species' geographic range in Brazil and Argentina. We found that both males and females jaguars exhibited an overall preference for forests and areas close to watercourses at both the home range and foraging scale. At the foraging scale, areas of high livestock density “attracted” male jaguars. We also performed a follow-up analysis to test for context-dependent resource selection (i.e., functional responses) by relating individual behavior to local habitat characteristics. We found that jaguars in heavily-forested landscapes showed strong avoidance of non-forest. Furthermore, we found that only the individuals in closest proximity to watercourses showed positive selection for water. Our results highlight that jaguars display different patterns of resource selection in different areas, demonstrating a considerable ability to use or tolerate a wide variety of different conditions across the species geographic range. This plasticity may allow jaguars to adjust their behavior according to land use changes but also increases human-jaguar conflict and jaguar mortality, especially in areas with high livestock density.

Introduction

Rapid changes in landscape composition and structure represent major threats to biodiversity worldwide (Candolin and Wong, 2012; Ripple et al., 2014, Ripple et al., 2015). Typically leading to habitat loss (Barnosky et al., 2011), fragmentation (Fahrig, 2003), and increased barrier effects (Seidler et al., 2015), these changes may limit animal movement and dispersal and result in widespread reduction of core ecological processes (Haddad et al., 2015; Tucker et al., 2018). Investigating changes in species' resource selection behavior in response to landscape alteration is critical for developing relevant conservation management plans to facilitate species survival (Van Buskirk, 2012).

Natural or anthropogenic change in landscape structure, however, often vary across broad spatial scales (e.g. regions, biomes, continents), affecting individuals and populations in different ways (Mysterud and Ims, 1998). As a result, responses to temporally-dynamic and/or spatially heterogeneous resources may vary considerably across a species' geographic range, presenting significant challenges for land managers and decision makers (Boyce et al., 2002; Roever et al., 2012). Conversely, some resources may be used consistently across a species' geographic range, regardless of their underlying availability. African elephants (Loxodonta africana), for example, show consistent affinity for areas of low slope, high tree cover, and greater distance from human settlement (Roever et al., 2012). Despite the growing number of studies investigating how species “adjust” their resource selection across rapidly changing environments, few studies have performed analyses at a scale that encompasses a species' full geographic range (although see Parmesan, 2006), largely because range-wide, regional or continental-scale data are usually not available.

Resource selection functions (RSFs) have been widely applied to investigate species-habitat relationships (e.g., Boyce and McDonald, 1999; Gillies et al., 2006; Roever et al., 2012; Lehman et al., 2016; Stabach et al., 2016). For instance, RSFs are frequently used to compare used resources at observed telemetry locations (i.e., ‘use’ locations) with attributes of randomly-selected locations that are potentially available (i.e., ‘pseudo-absence’ locations). Resource selection functions may differ based on how the representative sample of available locations is selected, potentially influencing the scale of biologic inference (for a review of RSFs, see Lele et al., 2013).

Over the past decade, discrete choice models have emerged as a promising alternative to traditional logistic regression approaches for assessing resource preferences (Cooper and Millspaugh, 1999; McDonald et al., 2006; Thomas et al., 2006; Carter et al., 2010; Rota et al., 2014). Unlike logistic regression models, discrete choice models allow the researcher to develop different ‘choice sets’ for each independent observation. In doing so, discrete choice models provide a robust framework for accounting for changes in resource quality or availability through space and time. Furthermore, adjusting the spatial scale at which locally-available alternatives are selected allows the researcher to identify and compare drivers of resource selection behavior across a range of spatial scales (McDonald et al., 2006; Bonnot et al., 2011). Discrete choice models also provide an opportunity to test for potential functional responses, or context-dependent resource selection, by relating individual behavior to local habitat characteristics (e.g., Roever et al., 2012).

Jaguar (Panthera onca) is a widely-distributed apex predator, ranging across the Americas and inhabiting a wide variety of habitats, stretching from tropical moist forest to tropical dry forest or xeric areas (Sanderson et al., 2002). The species is found across a gradient of human disturbance (Jędrzejewski et al., 2018), which has been shown to affect its movement patterns and increase local extinction risk (Morato et al., 2016; Morato et al., 2013). Across many regions, jaguar populations have plummeted over the past few decades and are considered threatened in several countries (De La Torre et al., 2017a). The species, however, is also highly adaptable, making them a good candidate to study how apex predators respond to a gradient of land use change. While many resource selection studies exist on jaguar (e.g, Conde et al., 2010; Foster et al., 2010; Colchero et al., 2011; Cullen Jr et al., 2013; De La Torre et al., 2017b), none have addressed resource selection across a large range of biomes due to data limitations and the difficulty of combining datasets across a range of disturbance.

Here, we applied a Bayesian framework to the analysis of discrete choice models in order to characterize patterns of resource selection of the jaguar (Panthera onca), incorporating the largest telemetry dataset available to date for the species that covers approximately 30% of the species distribution. We developed resource selection models to compare resource selection between two different scales of inference: home range scale (coarse) and foraging scale (fine), corresponding to Johnson's (1980) 3rd and 4th order of resource selection, respectively. We were most interested in: 1) identifying primary drivers of jaguar resource use at multiple spatial scales and 2) examining how resource selection behaviors differ among gender and individual as a result of differences in resource availability across the landscape.

Section snippets

Study areas

Our study areas spanned the southern portion of the jaguar's distribution, covering areas in Brazil and NE Argentina (~900,000 ha), and included eight study sites encompassing five biomes: 1) Mamirauá Sustainable Reserve (MSR, Amazon, 1,124,000 ha), 2) Serra da Capivara National Park (CA, Caatinga, 100,000 ha), 3) private lands in the Cerrado (CE), 4) Iguazú and Iguaçu National Parks (PNI, Atlantic Forest, 200,000 ha), 5) Invinhema State Park (ISP, Atlantic Forest, 73,000 ha), 6) Morro do Diabo

Resource selection

At the home range scale, the relative probability of a jaguar using a location was positively associated with the local percent forest cover for both females (μ5= 0.51, 95% Highest Posterior Density Interval (HPDI) – [0.20, 0.86]) and males (μ5= 0.71, 95% HPDI = [0.30, 1.15]). Jaguars also selected for areas closer to rivers, with relative probability of use decreasing with increasing distance to river in both females (μ3= −5.95, 95% HPDI – [−9.86, −2.06]) and males (μ3= −9.16, 95% HPDI –

Discussion

Jaguars are widely recognized as a focal and umbrella species for biodiversity conservation planning at regional and countrywide scales (Rabinowitz and Zeller, 2010; Silveira et al., 2014). However, the effectiveness of jaguar conservation strategies depends on understanding how resource selection relates to landscape characteristics and how the response to these characteristics differs across the species' geographic range (Silveira et al., 2014; Watkins et al., 2015). Our approach allowed us

Acknowledgements

We thank Antonio Carlos Csermak Junior, Apolonio N. S. Rodrigues, Cristina Gianni, Dale Anderson, Jorge Luiz Pegoraro, Ivan Carlos Baptiston, Leanes Silva, Mariella Burti, Paulo Roberto Amaral, Paulo Baptista, Pollyana Motinha, Rafael Garay, Raphael Xavier, Rogério Silva de Jesus, Silvano Gianni, Tarcizio Paula, Thiago Luczinski, Valdomiro Lemos, Wendy Debbas and the members and volunteers of Proyecto Yaguarete for supporting on animal capture and monitoring.

Studies were funded by FAPESP (

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