Stay home, stay safe—Site familiarity reduces predation risk in a large herbivore in two contrasting study sites

• Published in: Journal of Animal Ecology
• Main Authors: Gehr, Benedikt, Bonnot, Nadège, Heurich, Marco, Cagnacci, Francesca, Ciuti, Simone, Hewison, A., Gaillard, Jean-Michel, Ranc, Nathan, Premier, Joe, Vogt, Kristina, Hofer, Elizabeth, Ryser, Andreas, Vimercati, Eric, Keller, Lukas
• Other Authors: Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive (CEFE), Université Paul-Valéry - Montpellier 3 (UPVM)-École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE), Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL)-Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL)-Université de Montpellier (UM)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD France-Sud )-Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement (INRAE)-Institut Agro - Montpellier SupAgro, Institut national d'enseignement supérieur pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement (Institut Agro)-Institut national d'enseignement supérieur pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement (Institut Agro), Universität Zürich Zürich = University of Zurich (UZH), Ecosystèmes forestiers (UR EFNO), Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement (INRAE), Bavarian Forest National Park, University of Freiburg Freiburg, Fondazione Edmund Mach - Edmund Mach Foundation Italie (FEM), Harvard University, University College Dublin Dublin (UCD), Unité de recherche Comportement et Ecologie de la Faune Sauvage (CEFS), Laboratoire de Biométrie et Biologie Evolutive - UMR 5558 (LBBE), Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 (UCBL), Université de Lyon-Université de Lyon-VetAgro Sup - Institut national d'enseignement supérieur et de recherche en alimentation, santé animale, sciences agronomiques et de l'environnement (VAS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Carnivore Ecol & Wildlife Manageme (KORA), Bundesamt fur Umwelt, EU-programme INTERREG IV (EFRE Ziel 3), Federal Office for the Environment, Vectronic Aerospace GmbH
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2020
• Subjects: roe deer; survival analysis; movement; lynx; prey; site fidelity; home range; hunting; [SDE.BE]Environmental Sciences/Biodiversity and Ecology; [SDV.BA.ZV]Life Sciences [q-bio]/Animal biology/Vertebrate Zoology; Lynx; Lynx lynx lynx
• Online Access: https://hal.inrae.fr/hal-02901857; https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.13202

International audience 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.