The Habitat Use By Red Deer And Roe Deer In Winter And The Home-range Use By Red Deer Under Predation Risk

To search after the anti-predation strategy of red deer(Cervus elaphus) and roe deer(Capreolus capreolus)and the relation between predator and prey,this thesis presents a study on the habitat use in winter by red deer and roe deer and on the home-range use by red deer under pradation risk at Saihanwula Nature Reserve,which do good for the recovery and mangement of the wild animals at Nature Reserves.The habitat use(selection of vegetation types)of red deer and roe deer at landscape scale and patch scale were studied by line transect.An investigation on the footprint and scats of wolves and lynx at Zhenggou and Wangfengou core areas were conducted by line transect method,and the diet of both predation species were checked by scat analysis,while the numbers of them were evaluated by footprint traces and individual assessment according to interviews.And I also studied the home range of red deer by radio tracking,and the Kernel Method was used to calculate the annual and seasonal home range size in Arcview software.According to the superimposing of the ArcGis layers of the activity traces of wolves and lynx by line transect and the sites of red deer by radio tracking,I evaluated the effects of predation risk on the space utilization of red deer.The main results were as follows:1.Red deer rarely used the artificial larch forest both at patch scale and microhabitat scale for the reason of poor food resources and covers,but that wasn't for roe deer.If the selection for the artificial larch forest was discharged,the habitat uses of red deer and roe deer were similar.The results revealed that the living resources at Saihanwula Nature Reserve can satisfy the survival need of the deers.In addition,the interspecific competition between red deer and roe deer were not obvious.2.There were at least 7 wolves and 7 lynx at Saihanwula Nature Reserve,and the hares and the plants were the main food in occurrence percentage,and followed by small rodents and birds,but they preyed on red deer and roe deer less.These results showed that red deer and roe deer were not the stab. food both for wolves and lynx,and their predation wasn't threatening the survival of red deer and roe deer at Saihanwula Nature Reserve.3.The home range sizes of red deer varied seasonally with the smallest in summer and equal in the other three seasons.Wolves and lynx jazz around the home range of red deer,but not near to the core area,especially in winter.The results showed that red deer adopted anti-predation strategies on space utilization especially in winter.In a word,the anti-predation strategy was used by red deer both at the habitat use and the home-range use,so did roe deer at the habitat use.