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The presence of rabbits adjacent to roads increases polecat road mortality

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Abstract

Road mortality is an increasing problem for terrestrial vertebrate conservation due to the increase of both road numbers and vehicle flow. We hypothesize that the probability of a predator being killed on the road is related to the presence of its prey adjacent to the road, which is likely to be related to the use that these predators make of road verges. We aim to identify the features of specific stretches of road where road-kills of a predator (European polecat) occur in Mediterranean landscapes, including the presence of its main prey (European rabbit) and landscape and road features. We compared 85 100 m long stretches of road where at least one road-kill was recorded with 104 stretches without any road-kill in a dry agricultural landscape in central Spain. We used regression analysis to investigate the relationship between road-kill occurrence and the features in the 67% of the cases. Road-kill stretches were characterised by greater numbers of rabbit burrows in the road verges and by higher traffic flow and speed (i.e. higher speed limit, lower proportion of heavy vehicles, wider road and lower proportion of unbroken central lines). Road-kill stretches also had more metres built over bridges and lower densities of people. We validated our best model with a dataset (the 33% of the cases) not included in its development, which correctly classified 82% of road-kill stretches and 89% of non-road kill stretches. Our results highlight the need for taking into account food resource distribution when studying causes of animal road-kills.

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Abbreviations

AIC:

Akaike information criterion

AICc:

Corrected Akaike information criterion

IGN:

The Spanish national geographic institute

PC:

Principal component

PCA:

Principal component analysis

UTM:

Universal transverse mercator coordinate system

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Acknowledgements

We are very grateful to I. Cardiel, R. Jiménez, P.M. García, D. Martínez, O. Frías, J.A. Calvo, J.A. Lemus for their help in the field. We thank F. Valera, R. Václav, E. Virgós, J. Moya-Laraño, G. Hernández-Milián, J. Birks, D.P. Sleeman and an anonymous referee for their helpful suggestions. J. Moya-Laraño, Mark T. Bulling and B. Nicholls checked the English. Traffic data were provided by M. Vidal (Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha), A. J. Cervantes and J. Cobas (Diputación de Toledo) and A. Oliver (TELVENT). The Dirección General del Medio Natural of Toledo Province (Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha) partially supported our research by means of TO-01-03 and TO-01-04.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Ecología Funcional y Evolutiva, Estación Experimental de Zonas Áridas, CSIC, General Segura 1, 04001, Almeria, Spain

    R. Barrientos

  2. Grupo Ornitológico Alcedo, Facultad de Biología, Universidad de Alcalá de Henares, N-II, km. 36.5, 28871, Alcala de Henares, Madrid, Spain

    L. Bolonio

Authors
  1. R. Barrientos
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  2. L. Bolonio
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to R. Barrientos.

Appendix 1

Appendix 1

The results of the principal component analysis run prior to the development of the models in order to investigate the multicollinearity among independent variables

Variable

PC1

PC2

PC3

PC4

PC5

PC6

DRY

0.421258

−0.132407

0.230408

−0.839526

−0.030065

−0.007502

NON_CULT

0.219066

0.230037

−0.097520

0.809347

0.067512

0.218732

OTHER

−0.820769

−0.107831

−0.182926

0.110852

−0.043183

−0.257860

WOODY

0.077028

0.633344

0.101267

0.369508

0.224009

−0.143506

M_BURROW

−0.242736

0.066876

0.115347

−0.127656

−0.071437

−0.805967

N_BURROWS

0.147825

0.027444

−0.132319

0.182981

0.218188

0.786171

TOWN

0.263878

−0.006824

0.377190

0.529965

−0.054079

0.212921

HOUSE

0.230201

−0.354476

0.494688

0.072375

0.239758

0.215083

RIVER

0.126340

−0.286418

0.083116

0.025225

0.384410

−0.539122

SPEED

0.854368

0.029600

−0.110758

0.169153

0.018011

0.078418

TRAFFIC

−0.161921

0.115909

−0.762606

0.150385

0.265780

0.115479

HEAVY

−0.085134

0.117805

0.647747

0.082747

−0.053125

−0.223346

WIDTH

0.431084

−0.088140

−0.617466

0.248435

−0.061471

0.129852

PASS

0.008378

−0.750472

0.007064

−0.033088

0.118274

−0.143836

EMBANKMENT

0.126225

0.086953

−0.269614

−0.031974

0.783474

0.109793

BRIDGE

0.043028

0.775742

−0.042387

0.075463

0.153974

0.017040

UNBROK_LINE

−0.443517

0.143221

0.132539

0.129783

0.563282

0.069696

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Barrientos, R., Bolonio, L. The presence of rabbits adjacent to roads increases polecat road mortality. Biodivers Conserv 18, 405–418 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-008-9499-9

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