Wibke Peters

• PhD
• Researcher at Bayerische Landesanstalt für Wald und Forstwirtschaft

Partial migration, when only part of the population migrates seasonally while the other part remains resident on the shared range, is the most common form of migration in ungulates. Migration is often defined by spatial separation of seasonal ranges and consequently, classification of individuals as migrants or residents is usually only based on ge...

Large carnivores are declining worldwide and few examples of successful reintroductions exist, because of their large home-ranges, low reproductive rates, and penchant for human–wildlife conflict that is the main cause of their decline. Moreover, few studies assess whether habitat suitability predicted before reintroduction, a critical evaluation s...

Population assessment is a primary component of ungulate management, but managers are continuously under pressure to reduce survey cost. Another concern in aerial surveys is accounting for undetected animals (i.e., visibility bias). Currently, a stratified random block-survey design (hereafter, block-surveys) is used to develop moose (Alces alces)...

Species recovery is often impeded by inadequate knowledge on mechanisms of community interactions that cause and exacerbate species endangerment. Caribou and wild reindeer Rangifer tarandus are declining in many regions of their circumpolar range likely because of human-induced landscape changes. In general, their niche specialization enables Rangi...

Understanding how habitat and nutritional condition affect ungulate populations is necessary for informing management, particularly in areas experiencing carnivore recovery and declining ungulate population trends. Variations in forage species availability, plant phenological stage, and the abundance of forage make it challenging to understand land...

Every spring, hiding roe deer fawns Capreolus capreolus in meadows are injured or killed by mowing activities. To assess the temporal overlap between mowing activities and the fawning period, and thus help reduce the risk of mowing death, we have determined the average parturition date in three regions of Bavaria, southern Germany. Data on physical...

Background The habitat use of wild ungulates is determined by forage availability, but also the avoidance of predation and human disturbance. They should apply foraging strategies that provide the most energy at the lowest cost. However, due to data limitations at the scale of movement trajectories, it is not clear to what extent even well-studied...

Background Parental care is indispensable for the survival and development of dependent offspring, often requiring a delicate balance of time and energy allocation towards offspring by parents. Among ungulates employing a hider strategy, deciding when and where to provide care while also maintaining a sufficient distance to not reveal the offspring...

Invasive parasites that expand their natural range can be a threat to wildlife biodiversity and may pose a health risk to non-adapted, naive host species. The invasive giant liver fluke, Fascioloides magna, native to North America, has extended its range in Europe and uses mainly red deer (Cervus elaphus) as definitive hosts. The penetration of the...

When habitat use by field‐dwelling animals coincides in space and time with agricultural practices such as spring mowing of meadows, human‐wildlife conflicts can have deadly consequences for wildlife. Roe deer ( Capreolus capreolus L.) fawns are particularly vulnerable because they hide in meadows during the rearing phase. Thus, a better understand...

Sex-specific differences in habitat selection and space use are common in ungulates. Yet, it is largely unknown how this behavioral dimorphism, ultimately leading to sexual segregation, translates to population-level patterns and density gradients across landscapes. Alpine chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra r.) predominantly occupy habitat above tree lin...

As human activities in natural areas increase, understanding human–wildlife interactions is crucial. Big data approaches, like large‐scale camera trap studies, are becoming more relevant for studying these interactions. In addition, open‐source object detection models are rapidly improving and have great potential to enhance the image processing of...

Human activity and associated landscape modifications alter the movements of animals with consequences for populations and ecosystems worldwide. Species performing long-distance movements are thought to be particularly sensitive to human impact. Despite the increasing anthropogenic pressure, it remains challenging to understand and predict animals'...

COVID-19 lockdowns in early 2020 reduced human mobility, providing an opportunity to disentangle its effects on animals from those of landscape modifications. Using GPS data, we compared movements and road avoidance of 2300 terrestrial mammals (43 species) during the lockdowns to the same period in 2019. Individual responses were variable with no c...

Spring mowing in May and June is one of the main causes of mortality of roe deer fawns in agricultural regions. Knowing the exact birth distribution of fawns is important to guide farmers in their pre‐mowing precautions to avoid fawn deaths. Wildlife volunteers searching fields prior to mowing can act as citizen scientists by producing data sets of...

Wildlife camera trap images are being used extensively to investigate animal abundance, habitat associations, and behavior, which is complicated by the fact that experts must first classify the images manually. Artificial intelligence systems can take over this task but usually need a large number of already-labeled training images to achieve suffi...

Forests in Europe are exposed to increasingly frequent and severe disturbances. The resulting changes in the structure and composition of forests can have profound consequences for the wildlife inhabiting them. Moreover, wildlife populations in Europe are often subjected to differential management regimes as they regularly extend across multiple na...

Non‐invasive genetic sampling (NGS) methods are becoming a mainstay in wildlife monitoring and can be used with spatial capture‐recapture (SCR) methods to estimate population density. Yet SCR based on NGS remains relatively underused for ungulate population monitoring, despite the importance of robust density estimates for this ecologically and eco...

1. Context Forests in Europe are exposed to increasingly frequent and severe disturbances. The resulting changes in the structure and composition of forests can have profound consequences for the wildlife inhabiting them. Moreover, wildlife populations in Europe are often subjected to differential management regimes as they regularly extend across...

Density is a key trait of populations and an essential parameter in ecological research, wildlife conservation and management. Several models have been developed to estimate population density based on camera trapping data, including the random encounter model (REM) and camera trap distance sampling (CTDS). Both models need to account for variation...

2 The chamois Rupicapra spp. is the most abundant mountain ungulate of Europe and the Near East, where it occurs as two species , the northern chamois R. rupicapra and the southern chamois R. pyrenaica. Here, we provide a state-of-the-art overview of research trends and the most challenging issues in chamois research and conservation, focusing on t...

The chamois Rupicapra spp. is the most abundant mountain ungulate of Europe and the Near East, where it occurs as two species, the northern chamois R. rupicapra and the southern chamois R. pyrenaica. Here, we provide a state‐of‐the‐art overview of research trends and the most challenging issues in chamois research and conservation, focusing on taxo...

Climate and land‐use change are key drivers of environmental degradation in the Anthropocene, but too little is known about their interactive effects on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Long‐term data on biodiversity trends are currently lacking. Furthermore, previous ecological studies have rarely considered climate and land use in a joint des...

Recent events related to the measures taken to control the spread of the Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) reduced human mobility (i.e. anthropause), potentially opening connectivity opportunities for wildlife populations. In the Italian Alps, brown bears have recovered after reintroduction within a complex anthropogenic matrix, but failed to establish a me...

Red deer is an important game species in Europe and of interest to ecotourism. However, as a major ecosystem engineer, red deer not only have positive effects on biodiversity, but also cause economic damage to managed forests and agriculture. Data obtained from effective and precise monitoring of red deer populations are therefore needed to provide...

Due to human‐induced climate and landscape changes, distribution and abundance of many ungulate species have increased worldwide. Especially in areas where natural predators are absent, hunting is the essential management tool for regulating ungulate populations. Therefore, understanding the factors associated with harvest rates is the first step t...

Migration of ungulates (hooved mammals) is a fundamental ecological process that promotes abundant herds, whose effects cascade up and down terrestrial food webs. Migratory ungulates provide the prey base that maintains large carnivore and scavenger populations and underpins terrestrial biodiversity (fig. S1). When ungulates move in large aggregati...

Ungulates in alpine ecosystems are constrained by winter harshness through resource limitation and direct mortality from weather extremes. However, little empirical evidence has definitively established how current climate change and other anthropogenic modifications of resource availability affect ungulate winter distribution, especially at their...

The border region between Austria, the Czech Republic, and Germany harbors the most south‐western occurrence of moose in continental Europe. The population originated in Poland, where moose survived, immigrated from former Soviet Union or were reintroduced after the Second World War expanded west‐ and southwards. In recent years, the distribution o...

Climate and land-use change are key drivers of environmental degradation in the Anthropocene, but too little is known about their interactive effects on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Long-term data on biodiversity trends are currently lacking. Furthermore, previous ecological studies have rarely considered climate and land use in a joint des...

Rupicapra rupicapra - IUCN reassessment 2020

Animals exhibit a diversity of movement tactics [1]. Tracking resources that change across space and time is predicted to be a fundamental driver of animal movement [2]. For example, some migratory ungulates (i.e., hooved mammals) closely track the progression of highly nutritious plant green-up, a phenomenon called “green-wave surfing” [3, 4, 5]....

Estimates of red deer population densities in the Bohemian Forest Ecosystem have mainly been obtained by counts at feeding stations and in winter enclosures, in addition to non-standardized indicators like browsing and hunting statistics. However, the more common occurrence of mild winters in the future due to climate change renders this method inc...

Large herbivores respond to fluctuations in predation and hunting risk. The temporal scale of risk heterogeneity affects behavioral responses and determines the usefulness of metrics to quantify them. We present a conceptual framework to link anti-predator responses to risk fluctuations and appropriate metrics, based on temporal scale. We applied t...

The most common framework under which ungulate migration is studied predicts that it is driven by spatio–temporal variation in plant phenology, yet other hypotheses may explain differences within and between species. To disentangle more complex patterns than those based on single species/ single populations, we quantified migration variability usin...

Much research on large herbivore movement has focused on the annual scale to distinguish between resident and migratory tactics, commonly assuming that individuals are sedentary at the within-season scale. However, apparently sedentary animals may occupy a number of sub-seasonal functional home ranges (sfHR), particularly when the environment is sp...

Wildlife management systems face growing challenges to cope with increasingly complex interactions between wildlife populations, the environment and human activities. In this position statement, we address the most important issues characterising current ungulate conservation and management in Europe. We present some key points arising from ecologi...

Many animals undertake movements that are longer scaled and more directed than their typical home ranging behaviour. These movements include seasonal migrations (e.g. between breeding and feeding grounds), natal dispersal, nomadic range shifts and responses to local environmental disruptions. While various heuristic tools exist for identifying rang...

Habitat selection is a hierarchical process that may involve different patterns depending on the spatial and temporal scales of investigation. We studied habitat selection by European roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) in a very diverse environment in the Italian eastern Alps, during summer. We sampled both coarse-grained habitat variables (topographic...