The relative importance of direct and indirect effects of hunting mortality on the population dynamics of brown bears
Journal article, Peer reviewed
Permanent lenke
http://hdl.handle.net/11250/278968Utgivelsesdato
2014Metadata
Vis full innførselSamlinger
Originalversjon
Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Biological Sciences 2014, 282(1798) 10.1098/rspb.2014.1840Sammendrag
There is increasing evidence of indirect effects of hunting on populations.In species with sexually selected infanticide (SSI), hunting may decreasejuvenile survival by increasing male turnover.We aimed to evaluate the relativeimportance of direct and indirect effects of hunting via SSI on the populationdynamics of the Scandinavian brown bear (Ursus arctos). We performed prospectiveand retrospective demographic perturbation analyses for periodswith low and high hunting pressures. All demographic rates, except yearlingsurvival, were lower under high hunting pressure, which led to a decline inpopulation growth under high hunting pressure (l ¼ 0.975; 95% CI ¼ 0.914–1.011). Hunting had negative indirect effects on the population through anincrease in SSI, which lowered cub survival and possibly also fecundity rates.Our study suggests that SSI could explain 13.6% of the variation in populationgrowth.Hunting also affected the relative importance of survival and fecundityof adult females for population growth, with fecundity being more importantunder low hunting pressure and survival more important under high huntingpressure. Our study sheds light on the importance of direct and indirect effectsof hunting on population dynamics, and supports the contention that huntingcan have indirect negative effects on populations through SSI.population dynamics, harvesting, brown bear,sexually selected infanticide, behaviour,carnivore, ecology, behaviour
Beskrivelse
-