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Presence of a small mammalian prey species in open habitat is dependent on refuge availability

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Abstract

Identifying cues used by animals to select habitat offers insights into ecological trade-offs-often, contrasting choices amongst physical environment to meet physiological demands, food/other resources and predator avoidance. We examined the relative influence of food and refuge on occurrence of Royle’s pika, a common high-altitude prey in western Himalaya. We sampled distribution of rock with different crevices size (anti-predation refuge), and vegetation cover (food) in 0.25-ha plots at 20 pika occupied sites each paired with a putative (talus habitat) but unoccupied site along 1080-m elevation gradient. We used logistic regression and information-theoretic approach to test the effects of these factors on habitat selection. We found that pika occurrence was determined by rock cover with small crevices (AICc-wt summation = 0.98 R 2 = 0.77) in a positive way (β = 0.16 ± 0.03), whereas negligibly influenced by vegetation covers (AICc-wt range 0.01–0.21). Model incorporating rock cover with small crevices could accurately predict pika occurrence (93 % area under ROC curve). Since this species inhabit open habitats with high predation risk and heat stress, abundant rock cover with small crevices offers critical escape from predators apart from providing thermal refuge since temperature inside rock crevices are usually moderate compared to ambient conditions. It simultaneously allows animals to access larger foraging areas that perhaps reduce their dependency on local food availability. Thus, we demonstrate the relative importance of refuge over food in microhabitat selection by pika and highlight that concurrent large-scale rock extraction for developmental activities can adversely affect pika distribution.

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Acknowledgments

We are thankful to the Director, Dean and Research Coordinator of Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun for providing financial and logistic support, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) for providing grant to the first author during manuscript writing, and Uttarakhand State Forest Department for providing necessary field permits for this study. We also thank Gabbar Singh Bisht for his sincere field effort, Professor Ille Gebeshuber (AuthorAID mentor) for assistance in language improvement, and M.A. Owen for his technical inputs to the manuscript.

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  1. S Bhattacharyya

    Present address: Centre for Ecological Science, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, 560012, India

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Habitat Ecology, Wildlife Institute of India, P.O. Box # 18, Chandrabani, Dehradun, 248001, India

    S Bhattacharyya, S Dutta, B S Adhikari & G S Rawat

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  1. S Bhattacharyya
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Correspondence to S Bhattacharyya.

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Communicated by: Karol Zub

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Figure S1

Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) curve of bestfitcandidate model. (JPEG 19 kb)

Figure S2

Extraction of rock from Royle’spika habitat to perform different developmental activities in the study area (JPEG 232 kb)

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Bhattacharyya, S., Dutta, S., Adhikari, B.S. et al. Presence of a small mammalian prey species in open habitat is dependent on refuge availability. Mamm Res 60, 293–300 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13364-015-0234-0

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