Seasonal activity patterns and home range sizes of wolves in the human-dominated landscape of northeast Türkiye

Abstract

Gray wolves Canis lupus comprise one of the most widely distributed carnivore species on the planet, but they face myriad environmental and anthropogenic pressures. Previous research suggests that wolves adjust their time- and space-use seasonally to mitigate risks from humans, conspecifics, and other predators while maximizing their hunting and reproductive success. With many populations of wolves resettling in areas with dense human populations, understanding how wolves may adjust their temporal and spatial patterns in these more human-dominated landscapes is of high conservation importance. Typically, human presence causes wolves to increase their nocturnality and home range size. Here, we look at how seasonal home range size and diel activity patterns among resident and non-resident wolves differ in an ecosystem that experiences significant differences in human activity between seasons. While non-resident wolves had larger home ranges than resident wolves, there were no differences in home range sizes within residents and non-residents between seasons, suggesting that seasonal changes in human presence had no effect on home range size. The activity patterns of wolves were similar between seasons, but resident wolves had greater overlap with humans and were more active than non-resident wolves when humans were less present in the landscape. Both resident and non-resident wolves showed increased nocturnality, with both groups selecting for nocturnality more strongly in the nomadic season. This is the first study of tracking T & uuml;rkiye's wolves and offers the first descriptions of the temporal and spatial trends of GPS-collared wolves in this highly human-dominated environment.