The research  was supported  by CSIC-DGICYT (project  PB87-0405)and   Fundacion  Ramón ArecesPeer Reviewe

Aldama, Juan J.

Delibes, M.

Mammalia

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NOTES 143RIDGEWAY, R., 1912. — Color standards and color nomenclature. Published by the author,Washington, D.C., 1-44, 53 color plates.ROSEVEAR, D.R., 1965. — The bats of West Africa. Trustees of the British Museum(Natural History), London, 1-418.WASSIF, K., 1949. — Trident bat (Asellia tridens) in the Egyptian oasis of Kharga. Bull.Zool. Soc. Egypt, 8 : 9-12.Observations of feeding groups in the Spanish lynx (Felis pardina)in the Donana National Park, SW Spainby J.J. ALDAMA and M. DELIBESEstacion Biologica de Donana, Apdo. 1056, 41080 Sevilla, SpainThe Spanish lynx (Felis pardina), as most felids, is a solitary carnivore,i.e., it is assumed to live alone and only get into relatively long contacts withconspecifics during the mating season and rearing of the young (Ewer 1973 ;Kleiman and Eisenberg 1973 ; Waser and Jones 1983). Young solitary carnivoresare assumed to disperse after a period of dependence on their mother and beforereaching sexual maturity, but this process is not well known (Sunquist 1983).Particulary the time one individual remains in its natal area (philopatry) or movesaway (dispersion) is related to factors such as the social system of the species,the type of habitat and food availability (Greenwood 1980 ; Waser and Jones1983 ; Gittleman 1989 ; Bekoff 1989).Usually lynxes forage alone. However, the low rate of interactions withconspecifics probably does not mean a reduction of the ability of each lynxto recognize other individuals (Waser and Jones 1983). For this reason, in someparticular cases family-related groups may gather as it happens with some moresocial species of felids, such as lions (Panthera leo) (Schaller 1972) and feralcats (Felis catus) (Izawa and Ono 1986).Herein we report two observations (one year elapsed) of a family relatedfeeding group of free-ranging radiocollared Spanish lynxes at Donana region,SW Spain (37°00'N, 06°30'W). The Spanish lynx is a very endangered felidand has been considered the most threatened European carnivore (Mallison 1978).The Donana region constitutes one of the last areas where a relatively stablelynx population still lives (Delibes 1979).The family group was formed by an adult female, mother of a young indepen-dent female and a yearling male. Lynxes were located by triangulation usinga portable receiver with a hand-held directional yagi antenna.The first observation was recorded on 5 December 1985. By then the youngfemale was 21 months old and lived in its natal area, and the yearling malewas 6 months old and was located with its mother approximately 75 % of thetime. In the morning (08:00 hours) of 5 December a yearling female fallowMammalia, t. 55, n° 1, 1991.Brought to you by | CSIC - Unidad Coordinacion BibliotecasAuthenticated | 161.111.228.140Download Date | 2/1/13 10:29 AM144 MAMMALIAdeer (Dama dama) carcass weighing about 20-25 kg was discovered between marshand shrubland, close to a pond at the northeast limit of the study area andwithin the home range of the adult female (fig. 1). The carcass showed woundsin the throat and larynx caused by lynx canine-teeth (Beiträn et al. 1985). Theright limbs and some lateral parts of the body were eaten and the gastrointestinaltract had been pulled aside and laid at a short distance. The day before at21: 19 hours, we noted that the adult female was located at the place wherethe carcass was found. So, with a high probability this lynx killed the doe.YM YOUNG MALEVF YOUNG FEMALEAF ADULT FEMALE0 POINT Of THE CAACASSDOftANABIOLOGICALRESERVEFig. 1. — Winter 1985 home ranges of the radiocollared Spanish lynxes. YF was nutritio-nally independent but still living in the natal area. YM was most of his time withits mother AF. The limits of the Donana Biological Reseve (study area) had been drawn.By then, the yearling male was about 800 meters west from its mother andthe young female was located 400 meters north. On 5 December, at 10:56 theadult female and its yearling were located together about 300 meters away fromthe carcass under a heath (Erica sp.), and the young female was seen crossinga path 60 meters away (very probably it was feeding from the mother's killedprey). On 6 December, at 12:45 the three lynxes were located eating togetherfrom the fallow deer carcass. The next day, the three lynxes were apart andthe only remains of the carcass were some large bones and pieces of skin.The second observation took place on 25 November 1986 when the youngmale was 18 months old and independent, but still living in its natal area andthe young female (33 months old) by then was an adult established lynx inan exclusive home range bounding that of it's mother (figure 2). In that morninga young male fallow-deer carcass weighing about 18-20 kg was found in a similarplace as the other record, about 800 meters to the south from that former one.Brought to you by | CSIC - Unidad Coordinacion BibliotecasAuthenticated | 161.111.228.140Download Date | 2/1/13 10:29 AMNOTES 145Hind limbs and some other pieces were eaten. When the carcass was found,we saw the adult female and the young male at a few meters away from thecarcass. On the day before at 09:20 the adult female was located very closeto the place of the carcass. The other female occupying the neighboring homerange was also very close to the remains (this point was where the two femaleterritories met ; fig. 2) but later, we never saw this animal eating from it. Bythen, the young male was located about 1 km away from the two other lynxes.YM YOUNG MAL£YF YOUNG FEMALEAF ADULT FEMALE0 POINT OF THE CARCASSkm ?DOflANABIOLOGICALRESERVEFig. 2. — Winter 1986 home ranges of the family related group. YF dispersed fromnatal area and established in a neighboring territory. YM was independent but stillliving in AF home range.In the morning when the carcass was found, however, we saw the adultfemale and its offspring a few meters away from it, and at 16:00 both werefeeding. On 26 at 09:00 the mother continued eating and the son was apart.The next day both were far away from the carcass and the only rests weresome large bones and pieces of skin.We do not know how the young male was attracted to the carcass, butin the two records, it was separated from its mother when the kill was done,and subsequently met the adult female to eat. Probably there is some kind ofcommunication between mother and cubs, as described for bobcats (Fells ruf us)by Winegarner (1984).Our observations show how flexible can be the social behaviour of a "soli-tary" felid as the Spanish lynx. Similar trends have been shown in the lastyears in many species considered solitary, especially canids (Macdonald 1979,Moehlman 1989). Also there is an increased number of records of a certainsociability in solitary felids. McDougal (1977, in Sunquist 1981) has recordedgroups from six to seven tigers (PantHera tigris) around killed baits. Other typesof socialization have been described in mountain lions (Fells concolor) by Seidens-Brought to you by | CSIC - Unidad Coordinacion BibliotecasAuthenticated | 161.111.228.140Download Date | 2/1/13 10:29 AM146 MAMMALIAticker et al. (1973) during an adjustment of the population after the death ofsome adult individuals, and in bobcats, Bailey (1974) has recorded 4 adult indivi-duals reunited in a cave rock due to the inclement weather and a general rabbitscarcity.Usually, sociability is produced by a delay in dispersion, allowing the offs-prings to reach the age of maturity in their natal ranges (e.g. Izawa and Ono1986 ; for feral cats). In our case the young female stablished its own territorywhen it was 26 months old, while the young male begun dispersal movementswhen it was 23 months old. However it continued visiting its natal area untilthe end of the radio-collar life battery several months later (a similar patternof predispersal movements has been recorded by Sunquist 1983 for leopards,Panthera pardus). At least in the first case, as shown in this note, the femalecoexisted in the natal range with its brother of the following generation, againstthe "theory" about solitary felids, where dispersion would start before the cubsof following year are born (e.g. Kitchings and Story 1984, for bobcats).Kruuk (1978) and Macdonald (1983) suggested highty concentrated resourcescould favour delayed dispersion, moreover, young females could breed in thenatal area before dispersion as reported by Maehr et al. (1989) for cougars.These conditions occur in Donana where lynx staple preys (rabbits ; 85 % andfallow-deer ; 7 % Delibes 1980) tend to be concentrated by the border of themarsh (Rogers and Myers 1980). In winter, when rabbit density is at its minimum(Beiträn, 1988), sharing a large prey with young, even those already independent,could favour the female fitness by increasing the survival rates of its offspring.Finally, our second observation suggests the limit for this altruistic behaviourthat in the case of the Spanish lynx would be the establishment by the offspringin a new territory.We thank the field assistance of R. Laffitte and the staff of the DonanaReserve for helping in the finding of fallow-deer carcasses. N. Bustamante helpedus in first drafts. The research was supported by CSIC-DGICYT (project PB87-0405)and Fundacion Ramon Areces.Bibliography.BAILEY, T.N., 1974. — Social organization in a bobcat population. /. WML Mgmt.,38 : 435-446.BEKOFF, M., 1989. — Behavioral development of terrestrial carnivores. Pages 89-124,in J.L. Gittleman ed. Carnivore behavior, ecology, and evolution. Cornell Univ.Press, New York.BELTRAN, J.F., 1988. — Ecologia y conducta espacio-temporal del lince iberico Lynxpardina Temminck, 1824, en el Parque Nacional de Donana. — Ph. D. Thesis.Univ. Sevilla, Spain.BELTRAN, J.F., C. SAN JOSE, M. DELIBES and F. BRAZA, 1985. — An analysis of theIberian lynx predation upon fallow deer in the Goto Donana, S W Spain. Trans.XVIIth Congress of IUGB, Ministery of Agriculture, Brussels: 961-967.DELIBES, M., 1979. — Le lynx dans la Peninsule iberique : repartition et regression.Bull. mens. Off. Nation. Chasse. N° Sp. Tech. Le lynx: 41-46.Brought to you by | CSIC - Unidad Coordinacion BibliotecasAuthenticated | 161.111.228.140Download Date | 2/1/13 10:29 AMNOTES 147DELIBES, M., 1980. — Feeding ecology of the Spanish lynx in the Goto Donana. ActaTheriol., 25 : 309-324.EWER, R.F., 1973. — The carnivores. Cornell Univ. Press, Ithaca, New York.GITTLEMAN, J.L., 1989. — Carnivore group living : comparative trends. Pages 183-207,in J.L. Gittleman ed. Carnivore behavior, ecology, and evolution. Cornell Univ.Press, Ithaca, New York.GREENWOOD, P.J., 1980. — Mating systems, philopatry, and dispersal in birds and mam-mals. Anim. Behav., 28: 1140-1162.IZAWA, M., and Υ. ΟΝΟ, 1986. — Mother-offspring relationship in the feral cat popula-tion. J. Mamm. Soc. Japan, 11 : 27-34.KITCHINGS, J.T., and J.D. STORY, 1984. — Movement and dispersal of bobcats in EastTennessee. J. Wildl. Manage., 48 : 957-961.KLEIMAN, D.G., and J.F. EISENBERG, 1973. — Comparisons of canids and felids socialsystems from an evolutionary perspective. Anim. Behav., 21 : 637-659.KRUUK, H., 1978. — Foraging and spatial organization of the European badger, Melesmeles. Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol., 4 : 75-89.MACDONALD, D.W., 1979. — The flexible social system of the golden jackal, Canis aureus.Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol., 5 : 17-38.MACDONALD, D.W., 1983. — The ecology of carnivore social behaviour. Nature, 301 :379-384.MALLISON, J., 1978. — The shadow of extintion : Europe's threatened wild mammals.Macmillan, London.MAEHR, D.S., J.C. ROOF, E.D. LAND and J.W. MCCOWN, 1989. — First reproductionof a panther (Felis concolor coryi) in Southwestern Florida, U.S.A. Mammalia,53 : 129-131.MOEHLMAN, P., 1989. — Intraespecific variation in canid social systems. Pages 143-165in J.L. Gittleman ed. Carnivore behavior, ecology, and evolution. Cornell Univ.Press, Ithaca, New York.ROGERS, P.M., and K. MYERS, 1980. — Animal distributions, landscape classificationand wildlife management, Coto Donana, Spain. /. Applied Ecology, 17 : 545-565.SCHALLER, G.B., 1972. — The Serengeti lion. Univ. Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois.SEIDENSTICKER, J., M.G. HORNOCKER, W.V. WILES, and J.P. MESSICK, 1973. — Moun-tain lion social organization in the Idaho Primitive Area. Wildl. Monogr., 35 : 1-60.SUNQUIST, M., 1981. — The social organization of tigers (Panthera tigris) in Royal Chita-wan Park, Nepal. Smithsonian Contributions to Zoology, 336 : 1-98.SUNQUIST, M., 1983. — Dispersal of three radiotagged leopards. /. Mamm., 64 : 337-341.WASER, P.M., and W.T. JONES, 1983. — Natal philopatry among solitary mammals.Quart. Rev. BioL, 58 : 355-390.WINEGARNER, M.S., 1984. — Pugmarks and the biology of the bobcat, Lynx rufus.Z. Saugetierk., 50: 166-174.Brought to you by | CSIC - Unidad Coordinacion BibliotecasAuthenticated | 161.111.228.140Download Date | 2/1/13 10:29 AM

Observation of feeding groups in the Spanish lynx (Felis pardina) in the Doñana National Park, SW Spain

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