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Effect of habitat characteristics on mesocarnivore occurrence in urban environment in the Central Europe

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Abstract

Although urbanization is generally considered a major threat to local and global biodiversity, some recent studies have shown that urban environments provide suitable habitat for some wildlife species, including carnivores, yet little is known about the factors that determinate their occurrence and habitat preferences. The main aim of this study was to examine the relative importance of habitat characteristics in relation to carnivore occurrence along an urban–rural gradient in the Central Europe. Carnivore occurrence was monitored using scent stations (summer period) and snow tracking (winter period) in the regional city which was divided into the network of 154 quadrates (25 ha/quadrate) for the purposes of this study. From a total of six recorded native carnivore species, the stone marten Martes foina and the least weasel Mustela nivalis were the most dominant and widespread species in both study periods. PCA analysis revealed the existence of two informative axes corresponding to (A) urban vs. non-urban habitat and (B) residential vs. industrial areas. Surprisingly, the only species exhibiting marked habitat selectivity and avoidance of highly urbanized areas was the red fox (i.e. negative correlation with the first PCA axis). The stone marten tends to avoid industrial areas and prefers residential areas; however its presence/absence was not associated with the first PCA axis. On the other hand, the ermine stoat and the least weasel were relatively unselective according to our results. In conclusion, our results demonstrate high adaptability of various species of carnivore mesopredators to urban environment; however their response to the level of urbanization and habitat characteristics exhibits interspecific variation.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the research aim of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (RVO 68081766), by the grant of Grant Agency of University of South Bohemia 168/2013/P.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Agriculture, Applied Ecology Laboratory, University of South Bohemia, Studentská 13, 370 05, České Budějovice, Czech Republic

    Jaroslav Červinka

  2. Nature Conservation Agency of the Czech Republic, Administration of Třeboňsko PLA, Valy 121, 379 01, Třeboň, Czech Republic

    Jaroslav Červinka

  3. Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia, Branišovská 31, 370 05, České Budějovice, Czech Republic

    Lucie Drahníková & Martin Šálek

  4. National Museum of Agriculture - Ohrada, Ohrada 17, 373 41, Hluboká nad Vltavou, Czech Republic

    Lucie Drahníková

  5. Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague, Viničná 7, 128 44 Praha 2, Prague, Czech Republic

    Jakub Kreisinger

  6. Department of Biodiversity and Molecular Ecology, Fondazione Edmund Mach, Research and Innovation Centre, I-38010, San Michele all’Adige, TN, Italy

    Jakub Kreisinger

  7. Institute of Vertebrate Biology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Květná 8, 603 65, Brno, Czech Republic

    Martin Šálek

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  1. Jaroslav Červinka
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  2. Lucie Drahníková
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  4. Martin Šálek
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Correspondence to Martin Šálek.

Appendixes

Appendixes

Appendix 1

Fig. 4
figure 4

The spatial distribution of individual scent stations used for carnivore monitoring during the summer season. The colours of individual points are proportional to the first two PCA axes. The maps were generated using R package ggmap

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Appendix 2

Fig. 5
figure 5

The principal component analysis based biplot for habitat structure variation across sampling locations. The occurrence of individual species is visualized by colour plotting characters surrounding individual sampling locations (grey symbols). The size of these plotting characters is proportional to a number of records of the given carnivore at the given sampling plot (range = 0–4). The red fox indicated by blue, the marten by red, the ermine stoat by yellow and the least weasel by green colour

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Červinka, J., Drahníková, L., Kreisinger, J. et al. Effect of habitat characteristics on mesocarnivore occurrence in urban environment in the Central Europe. Urban Ecosyst 17, 893–909 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-014-0364-1

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