The importance of lagomorphs for the Eurasian lynx in Western Asia: Results from a large scale camera-trapping survey in Turkey

Abstract

Explaining predator-prey relationship is crucial for implementing effective conservation practices on large mammals. The Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx) preys on small ungulates such as roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) in Europe, and on hares (Lepus spp.) in more eastern longitudes, but there is lack of information on the southernmost populations of the Eurasian lynx in Turkey. This study explores the spatial and temporal relationship of the Eurasian lynx with its two main preys, roe deer and the brown hare (Lepus europaeus) in north-western Anatolia using long-term camera-trapping data. Camera-trapping surveys were held with 173 systematic camera-trap stations at 10 study sites between November 2007 and July 2016, and reached to 53,995 trap-nights in total. To analyse the camera-trap data, we used a generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) assuming binomial error distribution for presence/absence data and general linear mixed model (LMM) for the relative abundance data. In both modelling approaches, we considered the study site as the random factor. We estimated the overlap of daily activity patterns of Eurasian lynx with roe deer and brown hare using kernel density estimation. Both GLMM and LMM analyses indicated a significant spatial relationship between the Eurasian lynx and the brown hare (χ 2 = 22.4, P < 0.0001 and Likelihood ratio = 4.8, P < 0.05, respectively), but not between the Eurasian lynx and roe deer (P > 0.05). The daily activity of Eurasian lynx highly overlapped with brown hare (Δ 4 = 0.81), but we found a lower overlap between Eurasian lynx and roe deer (Δ 4 = 0.62). The findings reveal that the presence of Eurasian lynx is temporally and spatially synchronized with the brown hare in northern Anatolia, and support that the brown hare, but not the roe deer, constitutes the main diet of Eurasian lynx in the study area.