Wolf-Pack Buffer Zones as Prey Reservoirs
@article{Mech1977WolfPackBZ, title={Wolf-Pack Buffer Zones as Prey Reservoirs}, author={L. David Mech}, journal={Science}, year={1977}, volume={198}, pages={320 - 321} }
In a declining herd, surviving deer inhabited overlapping edges of wolf-pack territories. There, wolves hunted little until desperate, in order to avoid fatal encounters with neighbors. Such encounters reduce wolf numbers and predation pressure and apparently allow surviving deer along territory edges to repopulate the area through dispersal of their prime, less vulnerable offspring into territory cores.
157 Citations
Wolf-deer interactions: a mathematical model
- Environmental ScienceProceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences
- 1996
A mathematical model is presented to suggest that pack social requirements to care for the young set up differential predation rates causing segregation of high deer and wolf densities, and that the predator-prey interaction may play an important role in segregating and maintaining the territories.
Deer distribution in relation to wolf pack territory edges
- Environmental Science
- 1980
Indications that deer are more abundant in buffer zones than in wolf pack territories were obtained in northeastern Minnesota, and deer tracks in edges and centers ofwolf pack territories during and following a deer decline were counted.
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