Ane Eriksen

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Verified

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• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at University of Inland Norway

Background In wildlife studies, animal behavior serves as a key indicator of the impact of environmental changes and anthropogenic disturbances. However, wild animals are elusive and traditional GPS studies only provide limited insight into their daily activities. To address this issue, behavior classification models have increasingly been used to...

Background Monitoring the behavior of wild animals in situ can improve our understanding of how their behavior is related to their habitat and affected by disturbances and changes in their environment. Moose (Alces alces) are keystone species in their boreal habitats, where they are facing environmental changes and disturbances from human activitie...

Social organization in animals is a fundamental factor driving population dynamics and individual spatial distribution. Affiliation among kin is common in social groups, but kinship is no safeguard against intraspecific competition. Within social groups, the closest competitors are often related. In this study, we present 14 years of GPS-position m...

As wolves recolonize areas of Europe ranging from moderate to high anthropogenic impact, fear of wolves is a recurring source of conflict. Shared tools for evaluating wolf responses to humans, and comparing such responses across their range, can be valuable. Experiments in which humans approach wild wolves can increase our understanding of how wolv...

Humans pose a major mortality risk to wolves. Hence, similar to how prey respond to predators, wolves can be expected to show anti-predator responses to humans. When exposed to a threat, animals may show a fight, flight, freeze or hide response. The type of response and the circumstances (e.g., distance and speed) at which the animal flees are usef...

In the context of wolf recolonization of human-dominated European landscapes, wolves and humans are being coerced more and more into sharing the same space for their life activities. Traditional management of wolf/human co-occurrence heavily relies on minimizing overlap, encounters, and mutual disturbance to achieve coexistence: avoiding that wolve...

The ever-growing human population along with the expansion of settlements and land use, and effective hunting methods increasingly influence wildlife populations. Knowledge of management responses to re-establishing large carnivores is important to understand the overall impact of humans on large carnivores and their prey populations. We examined t...

The return of large carnivores to areas with strong anthropogenic impact often results in conflicts among different interest groups. One cause of conflict is that large carnivores compete with humans for wild game species. In Scandinavia, the recolonization of wolves (Canis lupus) and brown bears (Ursus arctos) has important ramifications for the h...

Wolves are back in their former distribution range, where they establish themselves as neighbors to stay. From remote to highly anthropogenic areas, humans and wolves are now bound to live next to each other, and sometimes, unexpectedly meet. Such encounters might be perceived as dangerous and unpredictable − while on the other hand, hunting and po...

With the recent recovery of large carnivores in Europe, preventive measures to protect livestock are on the rise. Fences that exclude carnivores from grazing areas have been proven as effective, but they can be costly as well as posing a barrier for wildlife. We studied the effect of exclosures of > 10 km² to protect sheep Ovis aries on the distrib...

Efficient wildlife management requires precise monitoring methods, for example to estimate population density, reproductive success, and survival. Here, we compared the efficiency of drone (equipped with a RGB camera) and ground approaches to detect and observe GPS‐collared female moose Alces alces and their calves. We also quantified how drone (n...

The global energy demand is growing, and the world is shifting towards using more renewable energy, like increased onshore wind power development. We used Global Positioning System (GPS) and Very High Frequency (VHF) location data from adult, territorial wolves Canis lupus in Scandinavia (Sweden and Norway; 1999–2021), to examine the potential for...

Endemic to the Atlantic Forest in Southeastern Brazil, the critically endangered Buffy-Headed marmoset (Callithrix flaviceps) is lacking the required attention for effective conservation. We modelled its ecological niche with the main objectives of (1) defining suitable habitat and (2) prioritising areas for conservation and/or restoration. The cur...

Scavenging is an alternative foraging strategy to predation for many carnivore species, as they shift between predation and scavenging in response to changes in resource availability. The use of carrion may lead to interspecific competition and is thus influenced by a risk–reward trade‐off to balance coexistence with guild‐members, where smaller sp...

Widespread across the world, human and wolf populations frequently meet on the increasing overlaps in their activities and habitats. Human attitudes towards wolves are diverse, complex, and deeply rooted in various beliefs and interests. They can be inherently connected to fear, and this “fear of the unknown”, amplified by the species’ elusiveness,...

Apex carnivores that rely primarily on predation play a central but complex role within scavenging ecology by potentially suppressing intra-guild competitors, but also facilitating them by providing a reliable supply of carrion. We investigated the competitive relationship between sympatric wolves (Canis lupus) and wolverines (Gulo gulo) in Norway...

Survival of juvenile ungulates represents an important demographic parameter that influences population dynamics within ecosystems. In many ecological systems, the mortality of juvenile ungulates is influenced by various factors, including predation by large carnivores, human hunting activities and weather. While wolves Canis lupus are known to pre...

Efficient wildlife management requires precise monitoring methods, e.g., to estimate population density, reproductive success, and survival. Here, we compared the efficiency of drone and ground approaches to detect and monitor GPS-collared female moose (Alces alces) and their calves. Moreover, we quantified how drone (n = 42) and ground (n = 41) ap...

Survival among juvenile ungulates is an important demographic trait affecting population dynamics. In many systems, juvenile ungulates experience mortality from large carnivores, hunter harvest and climate-related factors. These mortality sources often shift in importance both in space and time. While wolves (Canis lupus) predate on moose (Alces al...

Spatial patterns of human hunting and predation risk are mediated by the physical landscape, with human hunting risk often associated with habitat features contrasting those linked to risk from large carnivores. Risk patterns from hunters and large carnivores can also vary in time, which may allow prey species to adjust anti-predator strategies not...

Landscape characteristics, seasonal changes in the environment, and daylight conditions influence space use and detection of prey and predators, resulting in spatiotemporal patterns of predation risk for the prey. When predators have different hunting modes, the combined effects of multiple predators are mediated by the physical landscape and can r...

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Predation from large carnivores and human harvest are the two main mortality factors affecting the dynamics of many ungulate populations. We examined long-term moose (Alces alces) harvest data from two countries that share cross-border populations of wolves (Canis lupus) and their main prey moose. We tested how a spatial gradient of increasing wolf...

In Recommendation 257 L (2016-2017), the Norwegian parliament asked the government to undertake an assessment of the Norwegian subpopulation of wolves on the grounds that an independent assessment of what can be defined as a viable population of wolves in Norway has never previously been conducted. The Ministry of Climate and Environment gave the N...

The recovery of large carnivores in human-dominated landscapes comes with challenges. In general, large carnivores avoid humans and their activities, and human avoidance favors coexistence, but individual variation in large carnivore behavior may occur. The detection of individuals close to human settlements or roads can trigger fear in local commu...

The wolf population in Scandinavia is regulated by hunting. Therefore, wolf effects on prey populations are limited compared to unregulated predator populations, and confined to the area of stationary, territorial packs and pairs. One way of estimating the effect of wolf predation on moose compared to moose harvest, is to study moose dynamics in wo...

The wolf is a social carnivore, with 80-90% of all individuals in the population living in packs or pairs within territories that are actively defended against conspecifics. The remaining individuals are solitary wolves. Solitary wolves can be categorized into 1) stationary animals within an established territory, and 2) non-stationary solitary ani...

Predation and human harvest are the two most important factors affecting the dynamics of many ungulate populations worldwide. The re-establishment of the wolf population in Scandinavia has been heavily opposed from several societal groups. One of the main arguments against wolves is that their predation will result in a significant reduction in the...

Along with the recent re-colonization of carnivores, a number of studies have shed new light on the potential importance of top predators for biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Large carnivores may affect plant growth and biodiversity in forest systems through their effect on herbivores, i.e. the tri-trophic cascade hypothesis. In this study,...

Natal habitat preference induction (NHPI) occurs when characteristics of the natal habitat influence the future habitat selection of an animal. However, the influence of NHPI after the dispersal phase has received remarkably little attention. We tested whether exposure to humans in the natal habitat helps understand why some adult wolves Canis lupu...

The wolf is a habitat generalist with reproducing populations in a variety of habitats from arctic areas, vast boreal forests, open agricultural areas to densely populated areas in the subtropics. An important factor for wolf habitat selection is the availability of prey, and several studies have shown that wolves utilize the dark hours for hunting...

The basic social unit in wolves consists of the territory-marking pair, and together with their offspring from the contemporary and/or previous litters they form a family group, commonly referred to as the wolf pack. The family group's grouping behavior and movement pattern depends on the wolves' year cycle. Observations in Scandinavia from long-te...

We investigated whether the degree of natal exposure to anthropogenic influences could explain some of the variation in the selection of habitat with regard to anthropogenic factors in Scandinavian wolves. In the first part of the study we tested whether anthropogenic influences in the natal habitat might affect the choice of a breeding territory....

We present the first telemetry study of the habitat use of dispersing wolves in Scandinavia. During dispersal, young wolves enter unfamiliar areas, and their travel routes often follow natural as well as anthropogenic landscape corridors such as valleys and roads. With average dispersal distances of 225 km (males) and 154 km (females), dispersing w...

People living inside wolf territories may observe wolves or wolf tracks near their homes, and debates often arise about wolves’ proximity to human settlements and whether the observed behaviors are normal for wild wolves. This has been the case in the so-called Slettås wolf territory in Eastern Hedmark where wolves first established a territory dur...

The territory establishment of the Slettås wolves in an area that for truly more than a hundred years had been free of reproducing wolves initiated a still ongoing conflict regarding the wolves’ behavior towards human settlement. Local inhabitants perceived the Slettås wolves as bold, and therefore the management marked the breeder pair and four pu...

Brown bears (Ursus arctos) spend about half of the year in winter dens. In order to preserve energy, bears may select denning locations that minimize temperature loss and human disturbance. In expanding animal populations, demographic structure and individual behavior at the expansion front can differ from core areas. We conducted a non-invasive st...

Summary of selected model for location of first detection. (DOCX)

Number of dens per year. (TIF)

Model selection process for den site habitat models. (DOCX)

Model selection process for location of first detection. (DOCX)

Number of eagle owls observed visually and acoustically with different time lags. Data collected non-invasively during continuous midsummer daylight near the Arctic Circle, at the Sleneset archipelago (66°21ʹN, 12°35ʹE) in coastal northern Norway.

Counts of eagle owls, water voles and white-tailed eagles collected non-invasively during continuous midsummer daylight near the Arctic Circle, at the Sleneset archipelago (66°21ʹN, 12°35ʹE) in coastal northern Norway.

Circadian rhythms result from adaptations to biotic and abiotic environmental conditions that cycle through the day, such as light, temperature, or temporal overlap between interacting species. At high latitudes, close to or beyond the polar circles, uninterrupted midsummer daylight may pose a challenge to the circadian rhythms of otherwise nocturn...

Wolves in the Slettås wolf territory have for several years been described by local inhabitants and media as moving close to settlements. Five individuals of the pack have therefore been radiomarked with GPS-collars in January 2017, together with nine wolves of the neighbouring Osdalen pack. The Scandinavian Wolf Research Project SKANDULV followed...

Since the reestablishment of the wolf population in Scandinavia during the 1980s, there have been conflicts related to the coexistence of wolves and people, mostly regarding loss of livestock and dogs, people’s fear, and competition for moose. To reduce conflicts, knowledge about wolf dispersal patterns is essential for management policies, but has...

Med ulvens tilbakekomst og bestandsøkning i Skandinavia spurte mange om ulven ville påvirke klauvviltbestanden og redusere elgjaktens avkast-ning. Det Skandinaviske Ulveforskningsprosjektet SKANDULV (http:// skandulv.nina.no/) har derfor fokusert mye av forskningen på ulvens rolle som rovdyr. Ved å merke ulv med GPS og lete etter byttedyrrester på...

Social learning is widely used among vertebrates to acquire information about a variable environment. We conducted a study of social learning in the wild which involved cross-fostering eggs of blue tits, Cyanistes caeruleus, to nests of great tits, Parus major, and vice versa. This allowed us to quantify the consequences of being reared in a differ...

Recent research on reproduction in animals has emphasized phenology and prey matching in the long term and on large spatial scales (e.g., linked to global climate change). We studied how individuals within one reproductive cycle and at small spatial scales may try to maximize access to food resources that vary in space and time. Herbivorous mammals...

Birdsong is a species-specific signal that is used in mate attraction and intrasexual competition. This thesis concerns song acquisition in two oscine songbird species, the great tit Parus major and the pied flycatcher Ficedula hypoleuca. It addresses questions such as how free-living songbirds choose their song tutors and whether learning of forei...

In some songbird species, large song repertoires are advantageous in female attraction, whereas song sharing with neighbours may give an advantage in male-male competition. Open-ended learners, with the ability to memorize new song elements throughout their lives, may learn from territorial neighbours and thus benefit from increasing both repertoir...

We studied the simultaneous activity patterns of a breeding wolf, Canis lupus, pair and five adult moose, Alces alces, cows from April to November 2004 in a wolf territory in southeastern Norway. All study animals were GPS collared, and we used a total of 8297 fixes to analyse their temporal activity patterns. We examined the daily activity rhythm...

Laboratory studies suggest that young birds prefer to learn conspecific songs over songs from hetero- specifics. However, field studies have shown that many species copy heterospecific song. We cross- fostered pied flycatchers, Ficedula hypoleuca, to nests of blue tits, Cyanistes caeruleus, and great tits, Parus major, in the field. Recent studies...

Over 6,000 GPS fixes from two wolves (Canis lupus) and 30,000 GPS fixes from five moose (Alces alces) in a wolf territory in southern Scandinavia were used to assess the static and dynamic interactions between predator and prey individuals. Our results showed that wolves were closer to some of the moose when inside their home ranges than expected i...

De 21 forfatterne av denne rapporten har studert elg og ulv i og ved Koppangreviret. De har skrevet vitenskaplige artikler og oppgaver på bachelor-, master-og doktorgradsnivå. I denne rapporten forteller de om sine viktigste funn. Funnene omfatter økologi og økonomi. Rapporten gir råd om forvaltning av elg i ulverevir og peker på en forvaltningsret...