Ecological Research

, Volume 31, Issue 2, pp 229–238 | Cite as

Does habitat use and ecological niche shift over the lifespan of wild species? Patterns of the bearded vulture population in the Western Alps

  • P. Milanesi
  • L. Giraudo
  • A. Morand
  • R. Viterbi
  • G. Bogliani
Original Article
First Online:
Received:
Accepted:

Abstract

We analysed bearded vulture (Gypaetus barbatus) occurrences collected through long-term monitoring (from 1993 to 2010) in the Western Alps (1) to test whether ecological niches shift due to individual development and (2) to verify whether these patterns could reflect their spatial distribution. Thus, we compared the distribution patterns of three age classes (‘young’, ‘sub-adults’ and ‘adults’) through the K-select analysis. We then computed ten species distribution models (SDMs) and their average prediction to test for differences in age class distribution. The K-select analysis showed highly significant differences in the ecological niche among all the age classes and we also found highly significant differences in all the SDMs among the three age classes considered. Our results quantitatively showed that target species exhibits age specific shifts in the ecological niche and changes in the spatial distribution of individuals. Our methods are potentially widely applicable for testing differences among age classes of other species and thus, defining the best conservation actions (such as re-introduction) by taking into account different requirements in different stages of the individuals’ life.

Keywords

Age-specific ecological niche Ensemble prediction Functional response K-select analyses Species distribution models 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

P.M. thanks the University of Pavia and the Alpi Marittime Natural Park for financial support. We thank all collaborators who kindly collected data for more than 20 years, the personnel of Alpi Marittime Natural Park and Mercantour National Park, as well as Gran Paradiso National Park that provided useful data for model validation. We thank F. Della Rocca for her useful suggestions on an early draft of the manuscript. We also thank the Associated Editor-in-Chief Dr. T. Noda, the Handling Editor Dr. J. Sundell and two anonymous reviewers for their useful comments that helped to considerably improve the manuscript.

Supplementary material

11284_2015_1329_MOESM1_ESM.docx (735 kb)
Supplementary material 1 (DOCX 734 kb)

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Copyright information

© The Ecological Society of Japan 2015

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra e dell’Ambiente (D.S.T.A.)Università degli Studi di PaviaPaviaItaly
  2. 2.Parco Naturale delle Alpi MarittimeEntracqueItaly
  3. 3.Parc National du MercantourNiceFrance
  4. 4.Parco Nazionale del Gran ParadisoTurinItaly

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