About
120
Publications
38,154
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
2,621
Citations
Introduction
Publications
Publications (120)
Counting is not always a simple exercise. Specimens can be misidentified or not detected when they are present, giving rise to unidentified sources of error. Deer pellet group counts are a common method to monitor abundance, density, and population trend. Yet, detection errors and observer bias could introduce error into sometimes very large (spati...
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...
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...
The ongoing recolonisations of human-transformed environments in Europe by large carnivores like the wolf Canis lupus means that conservation conflicts could re-surface, among other reasons, due to predation on ungulate game species. We estimated the effect of wolves on ungulate species using data on wolf prey selection, kill rates and territory si...
Species assemblages often have a non‐random nested organization, which in vertebrate scavenger (carrion‐consuming) assemblages is thought to be driven by facilitation in competitive environments. However, not all scavenger species play the same role in maintaining assemblage structure, as some species are obligate scavengers (i.e., vultures) and ot...
Competition between apex predators can alter the strength of top‐down forcing, yet we know little about the behavioral mechanisms that drive competition in multipredator ecosystems. Interactions between predators can be synergistic (facilitative) or antagonistic (inhibitive), both of which are widespread in nature, vary in strength between species...
An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.
Age at first reproduction constitutes a key life-history trait in animals and is evolutionarily shaped by fitness benefits and costs of delayed versus early reproduction. The understanding of how intrinsic and extrinsic changes affects age at first reproduction is crucial for conservation and management of threatened species because of its demograp...
Large carnivores play a key ecological role in nature, yet quantifying the effects of predation at large spatiotemporal scales remains challenging. Wolves and brown bears have recovered in Sweden, where they share the same staple prey, moose. This ecosystem is representative of the Eurasian boreal realm, and makes an interesting case study for expl...
High densities of ungulates can increase human-wildlife conflicts. Where forestry is an important economy, intensive browsing can lead to browsing damage, resulting in volume losses, poor stand regeneration, and reduced timber quality. The forestry industry thus looks for practical, long-term measures to mitigate browsing damage. We tested the effe...
As wild ungulate densities increase across Europe and North America, plant–herbivore interactions are increasingly important from ecological and economic perspectives. These interactions are particularly significant where agriculture and forestry occur and where intensive grazing and browsing by wild ungulates can result in economic losses to growi...
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...
Several large carnivore populations are recovering former ranges, and it is important to understand interspecific interactions between overlapping species. In Scandinavia, recent research has reported that brown bear presence influences gray wolf habitat selection and kill rates. Here, we characterized the temporal use of a common prey resource by...
The organization of ecological assemblages has important implications for ecosystem functioning, but little is known about how scavenger communities organize at the global scale. Here, we test four hypotheses on the factors affecting the network structure of terrestrial vertebrate scavenger assemblages and its implications on ecosystem functioning....
Habitat selection of animals depends on factors such as food availability, landscape features, and intra- and interspecific interactions. Individuals can show several behavioral responses to reduce competition for habitat, yet the mechanisms that drive them are poorly understood. This is particularly true for large carnivores, whose fine-scale moni...
Food-caching animals can gain nutritional advantages by buffering seasonality in food availability, especially during times of scarcity. The wolverine (Gulo gulo) is a facultative predator that occupies environments of low productivity. As an adaptation to fluctuating food availability, wolverines cache perishable food in snow, boulders, and bogs f...
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...
Young forest stands and clearcuts in the boreal forest created by modern forestry practices along with meadows of abandoned summer farms may contribute as feeding areas for beef cattle. The patchy distribution and varying quality and diversity of forage on such unimproved lands may affect cattle productivity. Weight gain of 336 beef cows and 270 ca...
Advantages of low input livestock production on large pastures, including animal welfare, biodiversity and low production costs are challenged by losses due to undetected disease, accidents and predation. Precision livestock farming (PLF) enables remote monitoring on individual level with potential for predictive warning. Body temperature (Tb) and...
PDF of submitted version available for free at:
http://publish.illinois.edu/maxallen/files/2019/06/Sebastian-Gonzalez-et-al.-MS.pdf
Understanding the distribution of biodiversity across the Earth is one of the most challenging questions in biology. Much research has been directed at explaining the species latitudinal pattern showing that communi...
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...
Multiple use of communal forests requires informed management to balance divergent interests such as livestock grazing and timber production. In this study, we examined the habitat selection of free-ranging beef cattle in two vegetation-mapped communal forests of Norway's boreal zone. The two areas were 35 km apart, and they mainly differed regardi...
Cattle released for summer grazing in south-boreal forest are free to select among a broad range of habitats. The goal of this study was to identify the factors influencing the microhabitat selection of such free-ranging beef cattle, for grazing and resting. We equipped sixteen female adult cows with GPS collars and activity sensors in southeastern...
Natal dispersal is an important mechanism for the viability of
populations. The influence of local conditions or experience
gained in the natal habitat could improve fitness if dispersing
individuals settle in an area with similar habitat characteristics.
This process, defined as ‘natal habitat-biased dispersal’
(NHBD), has been used to explain dis...
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...
Identifying how sympatric species belonging to the same guild coexist is a major question of community ecology and conservation. Habitat segregation between two species might help reduce the effects of interspecific competition and apex predators are of special interest in this context, because their interactions can have consequences for lower tro...
Human-driven wildlife mortality is caused by both indirect causes and direct persecution due to conflicts ofinterests. The wolf, a predator frequently at risk from human-wildlife conflict, is returning to areas where it washistorically extirpated in Scandinavia (Sweden and Norway). The wolf is expanding via a management strategythat allows wolves to...
The aims of this study were to: 1) build a model to classify cattle activities based on locomotion and neck movement data and 2) study the daily time budget of non-native beef cattle in the boreal forest of southeastern Norway. We used GPS collars programmed to take positions and activity measures every five minutes on 18 cows during the grazing se...
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)
This dataset article describes the data and sources used to model risks for the recolonizing wolf (Canis lupus) in Sweden and Norway in the article "Integrated spatially-explicit models predict pervasive risks to recolonizing wolves in Scandinavia from human-driven mortality" (Recio et al., 2018). Presences on wolf territories were used to model th...
The alternative prey hypothesis predicts that the interaction between generalist predators and their main prey is a major driver of population dynamics of alternative prey species. In Fennoscandia, changes in climate and human land use are assumed to alter the dynamics of cyclic small rodents (main prey) and lead to increased densities and range ex...
Population-level management is difficult to achieve if wildlife routinely crosses administrative boundaries, as is particularly frequent for migratory populations. However, the degree of mismatch between management units and scales at which ecological processes operate has rarely been quantified. Such insight is vital for delimiting functional popu...
Activity and weight gain of free-ranging beef cattle in south-boreal forests of Norway I N T R O D U C T I O N National policies to boost beef production have led to an increase in the number of free ranging grazing cattle in the Norwegian boreal forest. These forests are highly managed for timber production, but also take account multiple-use as b...
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...
Research on large predator-prey interactions are often limited to the predators' primary prey, with the potential for prey switching in systems with multiple ungulate species rarely investigated. We evaluated wolf (Canis lupus) prey selection at two different spatial scales, i.e., inter-and intra-territorial, using data from 409 ungulate wolf-kills...
Background
Sarcoptic mange, a parasitic disease caused by the mite Sarcoptes scabiei, is regularly reported on wolves Canis lupus in Scandinavia. We describe the distribution and transmission of this parasite within the small but recovering wolf population by analysing 269 necropsy reports and performing a serological survey on 198 serum samples co...
The autumn has to a large extent been neglected in the climate effect literature, yet autumn events, e.g. plant senescence and animal migration, affect fitness of animals differently than spring events. Understanding the how variables including plant phenology influence timing of autumn migrations is important to gain a comprehensive understanding...