roe deer behavioural Plasticity and Adaptation To landscape CHanges

Informations

Funding country

France

Acronym

PATCH

URL

-

Start date

12/1/2012

End date

-

Budget

373,514 EUR

Fundings

Abstract

Landscape modifications, especially through habitat loss and fragmentation, have been recognized throughout the world as a key issue affecting biodiversity. In the context of global changes stemming from an ongoing and ever growing human footprint on the planet, it is thus critical and urgent to better understand how animal populations respond to environmental change and persist in modified environments. While many studies have investigated the effects of landscape modifications on species that are negatively impacted by habitat fragmentation, we still lack information on native species which benefit from habitat fragmentation and land use. This is, however, an important avenue of research, because many of these synanthropic species are considered as pests by society or at least as species for which we should control their expansion and density to avoid depredation and human-wildlife conflicts. In addition, while the majority of studies has focused on the effects of habitat loss and fragmentation on species richness and abundance or on genetic diversity, the impacts of landscape modifications on behaviours and life-histories are still poorly understood. And yet, behavioural plasticity plays a key role in species adaptation to the rapid environmental changes caused by anthropogenic activities because of the high reactivity and high lability of behaviours. The PATCH project is therefore designed to alleviate these issues. It aims at explaining how behavioural plasticity has enabled a primarily forest-dwelling species, the European roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), to colonize and flourish in human-dominated landscapes such as mixed forest/farmland mosaics and open agricultural landscapes, thanks to its great adaptability and plasticity. In particular, we will (i) investigate the effects of landscape openness on social behaviour, reproduction and dispersal, as well as on genetic diversity, (ii) evaluate whether the behavioural changes observed in response to the modified environment are adaptive or not, and (iii) quantify the demographic responses of populations to contrasted situations of habitat fragmentation and land use. This work will be based on both an intensive study along a gradient of landscape openness within a single population as well as the comparison of contrasting European populations with various degrees of habitat fragmentation and land use. We will collate existing field data and tissue samples from the long-term monitoring of five contrasting roe deer populations. We will complement these data and these samples by performing new field work in three of these populations. We will then genotype the samples using up to 22 microsatellite markers and use the genotyping data to characterize the social behaviour, reproduction and dispersal of the study populations, as well as to estimate individual reproductive success and genetic diversity within populations. We will finally use capture-mark-recapture data and population modelling in order to characterize life-history strategies and population dynamics of the different populations. This project is mainly driven by fundamental research, since it essentially aims at providing new insights into how wild populations cope with environmental changes. However, the project will also have direct applications for society, since the results obtained will provide essential information to predict how to manage the expansion of ungulate species across Europe in relation to landscape modifications.