Scraping marking behaviour of the largest Neotropical felids

Francisco Palomares; Noa González-Borrajo; Cuauhtémoc Chávez; Yamel Rubio; Luciano M Verdade; Rocio Monsa; Bart Harmsen; Begoña Adrados; Marina Zanin

doi:10.7717/peerj.4983

Scraping marking behaviour of the largest Neotropical felids

PeerJ. 2018 Jun 19:6:e4983. doi: 10.7717/peerj.4983. eCollection 2018.

Authors

Francisco Palomares¹, Noa González-Borrajo¹, Cuauhtémoc Chávez², Yamel Rubio³, Luciano M Verdade⁴, Rocio Monsa⁴, Bart Harmsen⁵, Begoña Adrados¹, Marina Zanin⁶

Affiliations

¹ Department of Conservation Biology, Estación Biológica de Doñana, CSIC, Seville, Seville, España.
² Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Unidad Lerma, Lerma, Estado de México, Mexico.
³ Escuela de Biología, Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa, Sinaloa, Mexico.
⁴ Núcleo Laboratorial de Ecologia Evolutiva Aplicada, Universidade de São Paulo, CENA, Piracicaba, Sao Paulo, Brazil.
⁵ Panthera, New York, United States of America.
⁶ Departamento de Biologia, Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, Vitória, Espírito Santo, Brazil.

Abstract

Background: Details of how, why and in what conditions large felids make scrapes is unknown. Here, we examined the general hypothesis about the use of scrapes for marking proposals, as well as to communicate with other individuals to signalize particular points or areas of interest, by studying scrape-marking behaviour of jaguars and pumas.

Methods: We surveyed by scrapes between five days and two months mainly during dry season in five study areas from Mexico (El Edén and San Ignacio), Belize (Cockscomb) and Brazil (Angatuba and Serra das Almas), which differed in presence and/or abundance of jaguars and pumas. Paths were slowly walked while searching for scrapes by teams normally composed of two people and tracks were stored in GPS, distinguishing the type of path surveyed (unpaved track roads, trails and cross-country).

Results: We found a total of 269 felid scrapes along 467 km of paths surveyed, obtaining a finding rate of 0.576 scrapes per km. Most scrapes were found in car tracks (0.629 scrapes per km), followed by trails (0.581 scrapes per km), and rarely did we find scrapes in cross country (0.094 scrapes per km). In trails, scrapes were found in a similar frequency in the centre and edge, whereas in car tracks they were mainly found in the edge. There were also clear differences in the position of the scrapes between study areas that differed in presence and/or abundance of pumas and jaguars, with scrapes located mainly in the centre in areas only with pumas, in the centre and in the edge in areas with a similar number of jaguars and pumas, and in the edge in area mainly dominated by jaguars. The remarking rate tended to be higher in one of the areas with only pumas where natural vegetation was scarcer. Felids chose sites mainly covered by leaves and located in paths less wide, clean and rarely used.

Discussion: Scraping was a frequent behaviour in the largest felids of America, although in some areas, scraping behaviour was rare. Scrapes seem to be signalizing some specific areas within territories and data suggest that they are made with the proposal of communication between individuals. It seems that a high scraping behaviour in pumas is not related to the presence of jaguars.

Keywords: Felids; Jaguar; Marking behaviour; Neotropic; Puma; Scraping behaviour.

Grants and funding

This study was supported by the project CGL2010-16902 of the Spanish Ministry of Research and Innovation, the project CGL2013-46026-P of Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad, and the excellence project RNM 2300 of the Junta de Andalucía and the Formación de Profesorado Universitario fellowship AP2010-5373 from the Spanish Ministry of Education. Luciano M. Verdade has a productivity scholarship from Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia, Inovações e Comunicações (Proc. No. 309468/2011-6). Marina Zanin is supported by Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico fellowship number 312627/2015-7. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.