SPATIAL ECOLOGY OF EUROPEAN BADGERS (MELES MELES) INMEDITERRANEAN HABITATS OF THE NORTH-EASTERN IBERIANPENINSULA. II: HABITAT SELECTION

摘要

The adaptability of badgers to diverse environments under conditions of vari-able food availability (amount and variety) together with their social organization patterns haveallowed them to inhabit a vast geographical range across Europe. Consequently, badger habitatselection has been addressed throughout most of its distribution range in terms of both individu-al ranges and sett locations. Several versions of the Resource Dispersion Hypothesis have beenproposed to explain habitat selection by badgers. Here we performed a compositional analysisto evaluate the habitat preferences of badgers in the NE Iberian Peninsula. For this purpose, weused data from the radio-tracking of 13 adult individuals in two Natural Parks near Barcelona(at home range and core foraging area scale), and also the location data of 39 setts in one ofthese parks. At the home range level, badgers selected mainly riparian vegetation habitats andavoided residential areas. Similar results were also obtained from the sett environment analysis.However, badgers chose crop fields for core foraging areas. In accordance with previous find-ings, our results show that badgers in Mediterranean environments choose habitats on the basisof the capacity of these to provide protective shelter rather than on food availability where foodis not a critical, limiting resource in the badger environment. We conclude that the same habitatcharacteristics are chosen for both sett sites and home ranges while agricultural patches definecore foraging areas. These results are in accordance with the Sett Dispersion Hypothesis.