Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Welcome to Carnivora. We hope you enjoy your visit.


You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.


Join our community!


If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features:

Username:   Password:
Add Reply
Study finds cougars avoid wolf territory.
Topic Started: Jun 25 2014, 10:11 PM (2,044 Views)
ManEater
Member Avatar
Omnivore
[ *  *  *  *  * ]
Posted Image

Jackson Hole’s mountain lions spend a disproportionate amount of time in parts of their territory that are far from wolves, new research by the Teton Cougar Project shows.
The Kelly research group’s paper “Home range characteristics of a subordinate predator: selection for refugia or hunt opportunity?” was published in the Journal of Zoology in late May.

Among other findings the research shows that lions tend to distance themselves from wolves, a competing species that sometimes kills cougars.
“If you look at what’s called the core home range, it tends to be farther from wolves than the rest of their home range,” said Patrick Lendrum, a Cougar Project biologist and the lead author of the study.

Individual mountain lions frequent the core areas within their home ranges the most, Lendrum said.
Because wolves select top-tier territories with the most available prey, subordinate mountain lions are being pushed away from the most productive parts of the landscape, Cougar Project team leader Mark Elbroch said.
“There is a reduction in habitat in the sense that they are prioritizing habitat differently,” Elbroch said.
Female cats, he said, particularly select for home ranges that are thick with prey and that are distanced from wolves. That’s also the case with males, which occupied home ranges 1.9 to 3.3 times larger than the females, according to the study.

“All cougar home ranges were farther from the centroid of known wolf pack territories than expected when compared with the study area,” the paper said.
“Spatial displacement between wolves and cougars has been noted in several other studies,” it said. “This, no doubt, limits the availability of quality habitat in the Southern Yellowstone Ecosystem, which has implications for juvenile cougar survival, juvenile dispersal success and overall cougar population dynamics.”

The Journal of Zoology study, which used 11 years of GPS and very-high-frequency data from 28 collared animals, also came to several other conclusions.
Lion home ranges did not definitely increase or decrease in size based on the availability of prey or the percentage of the habitat that was forested.

There was “mixed support” for the hypothesis that mountain lions would select home ranges that were more rugged, steep and treed — all sources of refuge — than expected compared with the study landscape as a whole.
Both female and male cats also tended to occupy home ranges nearer to roads than researchers had expected, the paper said.

The recently completed home range study relied mostly on larger, landscape-level data, Elbroch said.
The Cougar Project plans to piggyback on the Journal of Zoology paper with a new study that will use precision real-time data from GPS-collared wolves and lions to look at “fine-scale interactions” between the two predators.”
“With this new opportunity, in three years we may actually disprove everything we think we’re learning now,” Elbroch said. “It’ll be great.”

-> http://www.jhnewsandguide.com/news/environmental/study-finds-cougars-avoid-wolf-territory/article_22f996aa-4924-53b1-b5aa-06f254ad28df.html
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Black Ice
Member Avatar
Drom King
[ *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Im just waiting on two things.

The inevitable comment about this threads circumstances. And RojJones.
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Koolyote
Member Avatar
Martes
[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Interesting information, I guess the biggest Tom cougars would be the ones found living the closest to wolves. Nice find !
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
kuri
Omnivore
[ *  *  *  *  * ]
nothing new...more predatory animals means more competition and less food.
Its not unusual that every animal find it's ecological niche.
Wolves more open land and cougars more forest.
Edited by kuri, Jun 26 2014, 12:05 AM.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
VenomousDragon
Omnivore
[ *  *  *  *  * ]
I don't find this all that surprising, why would they want to regularly deal with a wolf pack?
Interesting read all the same.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Nordred
Herbivore
[ *  *  *  * ]
Is not difficult to understand...

Cougars dont avoid wolves....

Cougars love forest, perfect places to ambush their preys, and climb to trees when their lifes are in danger...

Wolves prefer places withouth trees to run following their preys till to hunt them...

They dont avoid each other, they just need different enviroment to sourvive most.

After all, if exist a great competition , (wolves killing young cougars or male cougars hunting lonely wolves.. ) probabily wolves dont want enter in forests, and cougars dont want enter in open field.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Vita
Member Avatar
Cave Canem
[ *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Solitary predators do avoid pack hunters when necessary. Puma and wolf tracks have been found in forest areas, often on the same path.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Nordred
Herbivore
[ *  *  *  * ]
Vita
Jun 26 2014, 09:34 PM
Solitary predators do avoid pack hunters when necessary. Puma and wolf tracks have been found in forest areas, often on the same path.
Of course...


But wolves prefer an enviroment and cougars other one...

But sometimes, or when is necessary they penetrate rival places.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
RojJones
Omnivore
[ *  *  *  *  * ]
Wolves != wolf
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Jinfengopteryx
Member Avatar
Aspiring paleontologist, science enthusiast and armchair speculative fiction/evolution writer
[ *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Relevance?
We are not trying to make a second cougar v wolf thread out of this, ManEater was just shearing an observation.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Mesopredator
Member Avatar
Disaster taxa
[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
I'm not sold that habitat (forest, grassland, etc.) is the only factor. It makes sense for predators to avoid one and another though.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
K9 Bite
Member Avatar
Herbivore
[ *  *  *  * ]
As previously stayed, Cougars and Wolves hunt in differnt styles and enviorments which limits their interactions to a huge degree. Cougars are solitary ambush predators, they need cover and dense growth to conceal. Wolves are pack predators that run their prey to death, they do better in open enviorments with space to run and herd their quarry.

Also, no predator wants to get hurt, especially solidarity ones like cats. If they did, their abilty to hunt amd survive is on the line. That's why you have instances like these where a cougar avoids running into.a wolf pack...sure it could kill a wolf but what is the point? Why risk being caught in the middle of 2 or 3 wolves? Same could be said said for the wolves but since they are a pack hunter, they are much more bolder and brash. They can somewhat risk a small injury knowing their pack can back them up. You can see this behavior when Dholes and AWDs chase and tree leopards.
RojJones
Jun 27 2014, 09:18 PM
Wolves != wolf
What's that supposed to mean?
Edited by K9 Bite, Feb 14 2018, 05:58 AM.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous)
« Previous Topic · Zoological Debate & Discussion · Next Topic »
Add Reply