Interspecific interactions among the wolf, ungulates, and mesocarnivores in a Mediterranean area

• Main Author: Lorenzo Lazzeri
• Other Authors: Lazzeri, Lorenzo, FERRETTI, FRANCESCO, MACCHERINI, SIMONA
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Università degli Studi di Siena 2024
• Subjects: Settore BIO/05 - Zoologia; Canis lupus
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/11365/1259334

Interactions that apex predators establish with prey and smaller carnivores have a great potential to shape ecosystem-level processes through top-down effects. In the last decades, growing attention has been paid to this topic. However, most knowledge comes from North American ecosystems, and the information is scarce for human-dominated landscapes such as European ones, recently recolonized by apex predators. For my thesis, I analysed the interactions between the wolf, its prey and smaller carnivores within a Mediterranean protected area where the wolf Canis lupus has recently made a stable return, i.e., the Maremma Regional Park, considering a period ranging from 2016 to 2023. This area host abundant populations of wild ungulates, including the wild boar Sus scrofa, the fallow deer Dama dama, and the roe deer Capreolus capreolus. The primary objectives of my study were to investigate the inter-annual variations of food habits and prey selection of this carnivore and to assess its spatio-temporal relationships with both prey and mesocarnivores (red fox Vulpes vulpes, badger Meles meles, stone marten Martes foina, pine marten Martes martes), to evaluate the potential for the occurrence of responses to the presence of the predator based on spatio-temporal avoidance. I used microscopic analyses of food remains in wolf scats and intensive camera-trapping. Additionally, I compared the spatio-temporal responses of the red fox to the wolf between my study area and a natural area from which wolves have never disappeared, i.e., the Białowieża Primeval Forest (Poland). Large herbivores dominated the wolf diet (> 80% occurrence) with mesocarnivores occurring minimally (c. 2%). The wolf showed a clear prey switching throughout the study. Indeed, at the first stage of the wolf resettlement (i.e., 1-2 years), the fallow deer was the main prey and was positively selected by this predator. In the following years, the wild boar replaced fallow deer as the main prey and was positively selected, with a steady decrease in the ...