Understanding environmental patterns of canid predation on white-tailed deer

• Main Authors: Olson, Lucas Odin, Van Deelen, T.R., Storm, Daniel J, Crimmins, S.M.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: University of Toronto 2021
• Subjects: Zimmerman; Canis lupus
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/107599; http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/cjz-2021-0024

The outcome of encounters between predators and prey affects predation rates and ultimately population dynamics. Determining how environmental features influence predation rates helps guide conservation and management efforts. We studied where gray wolves (Canis lupus (Linnaeus, 1758)) and coyotes (Canis latrans (Say 1823)) killed white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus (Zimmerman, 1780) in northern Wisconsin, USA. We monitored 499 white-tailed deer for cause-specific mortality between 2011-2014 using VHF radio collars. We investigated the locations of 125 deer mortalities, and determined 63 were canid (wolf or coyote) kill sites. We analyzed spatial patterns of kill sites using resource selection functions (RSF’s) in a model selection framework, incorporating environmental variables including vegetative cover, human development, snow depth, and water. We found no evidence that vegetative cover or human development affected predation risk; however we did find that increasing snow depth resulted in increased relative predation risk. This finding is consistent with existing research on the influence of snow cover on white-tailed deer survival. Our results suggest that understanding the spatial and temporal patterns of white-tailed deer predation requires a better understanding of snow depth variation in space and time. As climate change scenarios predict changes in snowfall throughout the Northern Hemisphere, understanding the effect on predator-prey spatial dynamics will be important for management and conservation efforts. The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author.