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Complex seasonal patterns of habitat use by a keystone mesopredator in boreal forest landscapes fragmented by fire.
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  • Derek Arnold,
  • Greg Breed,
  • Jared Laufenberg,
  • Nathan Berg,
  • Mark Bertram,
  • Bradley Scotton,
  • Knut Kielland
Derek Arnold
University of Alaska Fairbanks

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Greg Breed
University of Alaska Fairbanks
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Jared Laufenberg
US Fish and Wildlife Service Alaska Region
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Nathan Berg
Arcata Fish and Wildlife Office
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Mark Bertram
US Fish and Wildlife Service Alaska Region
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Bradley Scotton
US Fish and Wildlife Service Alaska Region
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Knut Kielland
University of Alaska
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Abstract

Wildfire is the most important disturbance regime in North American boreal forest communities, driving forest composition and structure across this region. Recent climate models predict that increasing fire intensity and frequency will result in a shift from a largely coniferous forest to one with a greater dominance by deciduous species. We investigated how an iconic predator of the boreal system, the Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis), moves through a range of burn scars (2-78 years old) and if these movements reflect habitat selection of their main prey, the snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus). Using GPS collars at 4-h fix rates, we fitted integrated step selection models to lynx movements across an 80-year post-fire chronosequence to assess habitat selection in both deciduous and coniferous forests. We predicted that lynx would primarily select intermediately-aged spruce, but young deciduous stands, mirroring the habitat selection of snowshoe hares. We found, however, that lynx habitat selection peaked at intermediately aged stands in both forest types. We hypothesize that this difference is driven by selection for habitats that maximize capture probability as opposed to simply representing the highest hare density. This idea is supported by observed seasonal changes in peak selection in deciduous stands, with selection for younger stands in winter, when leaf loss reduces cover. There was no seasonal change in coniferous stands as they experience little change in cover across seasons. Together these results show that lynx can be resilient to short-term shifts toward intermediate-aged stands. However, these benefits will likely diminish in the longer term as the decrease in fire return interval may reduce the prevalence of intermediate-age stands.