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The fine-scale utilization of forest edges by mammalian mesopredators related to patch size and conservation issues in Central European farmland

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Abstract

The marked negative impact of habitat fragmentation and the edge effect on many populations of bird species is a recent major concern in conservation biology. Here, we focus on the edge effect in different sized forest patches in Central European farmland. In particular, we tested whether the distribution of mammalian mesopredators is related to fragment size and distance to habitat edge, and whether the contribution of these factors is additive or interactive. To assess fine-scale utilization of forest edges, we established transects of four scent stations at different distances from forest edges into the interior (0, 25, 50, 100 m) in 146 forest fragments of variable patch size (3.2–5099.6 ha) from May to June, 2008–2009. This large sample size allowed us to perform detailed analyses separately for all detected species. Our findings confirm that mammalian mesopredators strongly prefer habitat edges and small forest fragments. The probability of occurrence tended to decrease with increasing distance from the edge for all seven carnivore species detected. The carnivores’ occurrence was also negatively correlated with forest fragment area. All detected species tended to prefer small fragments, with the exception of the Eurasian badger (showing the reverse but non-significant pattern) and the red fox (no effect of fragment size). In addition, the non-significant interaction between fragment size and distance to edge suggests that both of these factors contribute independently and additively to mesopredator-mediated effects on biota in a fragmented landscape.

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Acknowledgments

We want to thank J. Svobodová, J. Riegert, D.Hardekopf and F. Sedláček to valuable comments for early draft of manuscript. The study was supported by the grant MSMT6007665801 of the Czech Ministry of education and SGA2009016 of the Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia. J.K. was partially supported by Research Centrum project no. LC06073 and VAV grant SP2dD-60-08.

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  1. Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia, Branišovská 31, 370 05, Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic

    Jaroslav Červinka, Martin Šálek & Petr Pavluvčík

  2. Applied Ecology Laboratory, Faculty of Agriculture, University of South Bohemia, Studentská 13, 370 05, Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic

    Jaroslav Červinka

  3. Institute of Vertebrate Biology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Květná 8, 603 65, Brno, Czech Republic

    Martin Šálek

  4. Global Change Research Centre v.v.i, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Bělidla 986/4a, 603 00, Brno, Czech Republic

    Martin Šálek

  5. Department of Ecology & Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Science, Palacký University Olomouc, tř. Svobody 26, 771 46, Olomouc, Czech Republic

    Petr Pavluvčík

  6. Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague, Viničná 7, 128 44, Praha 2, Czech Republic

    Jakub Kreisinger

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  1. Jaroslav Červinka
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Červinka, J., Šálek, M., Pavluvčík, P. et al. The fine-scale utilization of forest edges by mammalian mesopredators related to patch size and conservation issues in Central European farmland. Biodivers Conserv 20, 3459–3475 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-011-0135-8

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