Cargando…

Beating the heat: ecology of desert bobcats

BACKGROUND: Relative to temperate regions, little is known about bobcats (Lynx rufus) in the Sonoran Desert portion of their range, in part due to the difficulty of sampling an elusive carnivore in harsh desert environments. Here, we quantify habitat selection and evaluate diet of bobcats at Kofa Na...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Draper, John, Rodgers, Torrey, Young, Julie K.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8896297/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35246040
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12862-022-01973-3
_version_ 1784663131825373184
author Draper, John
Rodgers, Torrey
Young, Julie K.
author_facet Draper, John
Rodgers, Torrey
Young, Julie K.
author_sort Draper, John
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Relative to temperate regions, little is known about bobcats (Lynx rufus) in the Sonoran Desert portion of their range, in part due to the difficulty of sampling an elusive carnivore in harsh desert environments. Here, we quantify habitat selection and evaluate diet of bobcats at Kofa National Wildlife Refuge, Arizona, USA, using multiple sampling techniques including GPS telemetry, camera traps, and DNA metabarcoding. RESULTS: Home ranges during the hot season were smaller than during the cool season. Camera trapping failed to yield a high enough detection rate to identify habitat occupancy trends but third-order resource selection from GPS-collar data showed a preference for higher elevations and rugged terrain at lower elevations. Diet composition consisted of a diverse range of available small prey items, including a higher frequency of avian prey than previously observed in bobcats. CONCLUSIONS: Desert bobcats in our study maintained smaller home ranges and primarily consumed smaller prey than their more northern relatives. This study illustrates the benefit of employing multiple, complementary sampling methods to understand the ecology of elusive species. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12862-022-01973-3.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-8896297
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2022
publisher BioMed Central
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-88962972022-03-14 Beating the heat: ecology of desert bobcats Draper, John Rodgers, Torrey Young, Julie K. BMC Ecol Evol Research Article BACKGROUND: Relative to temperate regions, little is known about bobcats (Lynx rufus) in the Sonoran Desert portion of their range, in part due to the difficulty of sampling an elusive carnivore in harsh desert environments. Here, we quantify habitat selection and evaluate diet of bobcats at Kofa National Wildlife Refuge, Arizona, USA, using multiple sampling techniques including GPS telemetry, camera traps, and DNA metabarcoding. RESULTS: Home ranges during the hot season were smaller than during the cool season. Camera trapping failed to yield a high enough detection rate to identify habitat occupancy trends but third-order resource selection from GPS-collar data showed a preference for higher elevations and rugged terrain at lower elevations. Diet composition consisted of a diverse range of available small prey items, including a higher frequency of avian prey than previously observed in bobcats. CONCLUSIONS: Desert bobcats in our study maintained smaller home ranges and primarily consumed smaller prey than their more northern relatives. This study illustrates the benefit of employing multiple, complementary sampling methods to understand the ecology of elusive species. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12862-022-01973-3. BioMed Central 2022-03-04 /pmc/articles/PMC8896297/ /pubmed/35246040 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12862-022-01973-3 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research Article
Draper, John
Rodgers, Torrey
Young, Julie K.
Beating the heat: ecology of desert bobcats
title Beating the heat: ecology of desert bobcats
title_full Beating the heat: ecology of desert bobcats
title_fullStr Beating the heat: ecology of desert bobcats
title_full_unstemmed Beating the heat: ecology of desert bobcats
title_short Beating the heat: ecology of desert bobcats
title_sort beating the heat: ecology of desert bobcats
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8896297/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35246040
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12862-022-01973-3
work_keys_str_mv AT draperjohn beatingtheheatecologyofdesertbobcats
AT rodgerstorrey beatingtheheatecologyofdesertbobcats
AT youngjuliek beatingtheheatecologyofdesertbobcats