Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
Centre d'Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive, UMR 5175, CNRS - Université de Montpellier - Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier - EPHE, Montpellier Cedex 5, France.
J Anim Ecol. 2020 Jun;89(6):1329-1339. doi: 10.1111/1365-2656.13202. Epub 2020 Apr 4.
Restricting movements to familiar areas should increase individual fitness as it provides animals with information about the spatial distribution of resources and predation risk. While the benefits of familiarity for locating resources have been reported previously, the potential value of familiarity for predation avoidance has been accorded less attention. It has been suggested that familiarity should be beneficial for anti-predator behaviour when direct cues of predation risk are unclear and do not allow prey to identify well-defined spatial refuges. However, to our knowledge, this hypothesis has yet to be tested. Here, we assessed how site familiarity, measured as the intensity of use of a given location, is associated with the probability of roe deer Capreolus capreolus being killed by two predators with contrasting hunting tactics, the Eurasian lynx Lynx lynx and human hunters. While risk of human hunting was confined to open habitats, risk of lynx predation was more diffuse, with no clear refuge areas. We estimated cause-specific mortality rates in a competing risk framework for 212 GPS-collared roe deer in two ecologically distinct areas of Central Europe to test the hypothesis that the daily risk of being killed by lynx or hunters should be lower in areas of high familiarity. We found strong evidence that site familiarity reduces the risk of being predated by lynx, whereas the evidence that the risk of being hunted is linked to site familiarity was weak. We suggest that local knowledge about small-scale differences in predation risk and information about efficient escape routes affect an individual's ability to avoid or escape an attack by an ambush predator. Our study emphasizes the role of site familiarity in determining the susceptibility of prey to predation. Further research will be required to understand better how a cognitive map of individual spatial information is beneficial for avoiding predation in the arms race that drives the predator-prey shell game.
限制动物在熟悉区域内的活动范围应该会提高个体的适应性，因为这为动物提供了有关资源空间分布和捕食风险的信息。虽然先前已经报道了熟悉度在寻找资源方面的益处，但对熟悉度在避免捕食方面的潜在价值关注较少。有人认为，当捕食风险的直接线索不明确且猎物无法识别明确的空间避难所时，熟悉度应该有利于抗捕食行为。然而，据我们所知，这一假设尚未得到检验。在这里，我们评估了地点熟悉度（以特定地点的使用强度来衡量）与两种具有不同狩猎策略的捕食者（欧亚猞猁 Lynx lynx 和人类猎人）杀死马鹿 Capreolus capreolus 的概率之间的关系。虽然人类狩猎的风险仅限于开阔栖息地，但猞猁捕食的风险更为分散，没有明确的避难区。我们在两个生态截然不同的中欧地区使用 GPS 项圈对 212 只马鹿进行了竞争风险框架下的特定原因死亡率估计，以检验以下假设：即，在熟悉度高的地区，每天被猞猁或猎人杀死的风险应该更低。我们发现强有力的证据表明，地点熟悉度降低了被猞猁捕食的风险，而被猎人猎杀的风险与地点熟悉度之间的关联证据较弱。我们认为，关于小尺度捕食风险差异的局部知识以及有关有效逃逸路线的信息，会影响个体避免或逃脱伏击捕食者攻击的能力。我们的研究强调了地点熟悉度在确定猎物易受捕食的程度方面的作用。需要进一步的研究来更好地理解个体空间信息的认知图如何有助于在驱动捕食者-猎物博弈的军备竞赛中避免捕食。
