背景:作为全球广泛分布的顶级捕食者,人类对猎物种群和生态系统具有前所未有的致命和非致命影响。然而与非人类捕食者相比,对人类猎人的运动生态学知之甚少,包括狩猎行为如何与环境相互作用。
方法:我们描述了狩猎模式,栖息地选择,并使用高分辨率GPS数据在加利福尼亚收获了483名步枪猎人的成功。我们使用隐马尔可夫模型来描述精细尺度的运动行为,k-means聚类通过狩猎模式对猎人进行分组,根据他们在每种行为状态下花费的时间。最后,我们使用资源选择函数来量化每种狩猎模式的成功和不成功猎人的栖息地选择模式。
结果:猎人表现出三种不同且成功的狩猎模式(\“coursing\”,\"跟踪\",和“坐着等待”),法庭是最成功的策略。在狩猎模式中,道路的选择模式有所不同,地形,和栖息地覆盖,不同模式下成功和不成功猎人的栖息地使用存在差异。
结论:我们的研究表明,猎人可以成功地采用多种收获策略,狩猎的成功是由狩猎模式和景观特征的相互作用所介导的。这样的结果突出了人类狩猎模式的广度,即使在单一的狩猎技术中,并深入了解人类对野生动物施加捕食压力的各种方式。
BACKGROUND: As a globally widespread apex predator, humans have unprecedented lethal and non-lethal effects on prey populations and ecosystems. Yet compared to non-human predators, little is known about the movement ecology of human hunters, including how hunting behavior interacts with the environment.
METHODS: We characterized the hunting modes, habitat selection, and harvest success of 483 rifle hunters in California using high-resolution GPS data. We used Hidden Markov Models to characterize fine-scale movement behavior, and k-means clustering to group hunters by hunting mode, on the basis of their time spent in each behavioral state. Finally, we used Resource Selection Functions to quantify patterns of habitat selection for successful and unsuccessful hunters of each hunting mode.
RESULTS: Hunters exhibited three distinct and successful hunting modes (\"coursing\", \"stalking\", and \"sit-and-wait\"), with coursings as the most successful strategy. Across hunting modes, there was variation in patterns of selection for roads, topography, and habitat cover, with differences in habitat use of successful and unsuccessful hunters across modes.
CONCLUSIONS: Our study indicates that hunters can successfully employ a diversity of harvest strategies, and that hunting success is mediated by the interacting effects of hunting mode and landscape features. Such results highlight the breadth of human hunting modes, even within a single hunting technique, and lend insight into the varied ways that humans exert predation pressure on wildlife.