Abstract
European badgers (Meles meles) are considered central-place foragers, whose spatial ecology is predominantly determined by sett location. Many studies have assessed the factors determining sett site selection throughout this species’ range, but these have often been geographically limited and have primarily identified locally dependent factors. To infer key factors determining sett location, a broader scale approach is needed. Between June 2014 and January 2017, we surveyed mainland Portugal to detect badger setts in 10 × 10 km cells, corresponding to a total of 657.5 km walked line transects. We detected 54 main setts in 136 surveyed cells. Each sett and non-sett site (i.e. transects without setts) was characterised using bioenvironmental variables (e.g. land cover, presence of human infrastructure, soil). We used generalized linear mixed models to test five hypotheses potentially explaining sett location: land cover composition; anthropogenic disturbance; abiotic environmental drivers; trophic resource availability; and a combined effect of all these factors. Our findings show that the key factors for badger sett site selection in Portugal are: (1) disturbance avoidance (low beehive density; absence of livestock; far from hunting reserves), but with a tendency to be located close to highways and unpaved roads; and (2) ease of excavation (avoidance of sedimentary/metamorphic composite rocks). Although specific factors among these drivers may be more important locally or regionally, these major drivers have also been identified elsewhere in Europe. Our nationwide approach contributes to a broader understanding of general patterns of sett site selection by badgers in southern Europe. Furthermore, it provides the national authorities with novel and broad-scale data to facilitate sustainable species conservation of badgers in the southwestern limit of their range.
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Financial support was provided by the University of Aveiro (Department of Biology), CESAM (UID/AMB/50017), and FCT/MEC through national funds, and the project was co-funded by FEDER within the PT2020 Partnership Agreement and Compete 2020. Our thanks also to the University of Lisbon and cE3c (UID/BIA/00329/2013) for support. Some map data is copyrighted to OpenStreetMap contributors and is available from https://www.openstreetmap.org. PM received a postdoctoral fellowship funded by FEDER through the Operational Programme for Competitiveness Factors - COMPETE and by national funds through FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology under grants UID/BIA/50027/2013 and POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006821.
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Hipólito, D., Guedes, D., Cabecinha, D. et al. Drivers of sett site location by European badgers in Portugal. Biodivers Conserv 27, 2951–2970 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-018-1580-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-018-1580-4