Authors
Anne G Hertel, Andreas Zedrosser, Atle Mysterud, Ole-Gunnar Støen, Sam MJG Steyaert, Jon E Swenson
Publication date
2016/12
Journal
Oecologia
Volume
182
Pages
1019-1029
Publisher
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Description
Avoiding predators most often entails a food cost. For the Scandinavian brown bear (Ursus arctos), the hunting season coincides with the period of hyperphagia. Hunting mortality risk is not uniformly distributed throughout the day, but peaks in the early morning hours. As bears must increase mass for winter survival, they should be sensitive to temporal allocation of antipredator responses to periods of highest risk. We expected bears to reduce foraging activity at the expense of food intake in the morning hours when risk was high, but not in the afternoon, when risk was low. We used fine-scale GPS-derived activity patterns during the 2 weeks before and after the onset of the annual bear hunting season. At locations of probable foraging, we assessed abundance and sugar content, of bilberry (Vaccinium myrtillus), the most important autumn food resource for bears in this area. Bears decreased their foraging …
Total citations
20172018201920202021202220232024410101578116