Spatial patterns in brown bear Ursus arctos diet: the role of geographical and environmental factors

By K. Bojarska, N. Selva. 2012

274 citations recorded by the source corpus.

1We reviewed worldwide spatial patterns in the food habits of the brown bear Ursus arctos in relation to geographical (latitude, longitude, altitude) and environmental (temperature, snow cover depth and duration, precipitation, primary productivity) variables. 2We collected data from 28 studies on brown bear diet based on faecal analysis, covering the entire geographical range of this widely distributed large carnivore. We analysed separately four data sets based on different methods of diet assessment. 3Temperature and snow conditions were the most important factors determining the composition of brown bear diet. Populations in locations with deeper snow cover, lower temperatures and lower productivity consumed significantly more vertebrates, fewer invertebrates and less mast. Trophic diversity was positively correlated with temperature, precipitation and productivity but negatively correlated with the duration of snow cover and snow depth. Brown bear populations from temperate forest biomes had the most diverse diet. In general, environmental factors were more explicative of diet than geographical variables. 4Dietary spatial patterns were best revealed by the relative biomass and energy content methods of diet analysis, whereas the frequency of occurrence and relative biomass methods were most appropriate for investigating variation in trophic diversity. 5Spatial variation in brown bear diet is the result of environmental conditions, especially climatic factors, which affect the nutritional and energetic requirements of brown bears as well as the local availability of food. The trade-off between food availability on the one hand, and nutritional and energetic requirements on the other hand, determines brown bear foraging decisions. In hibernating species such as the brown bear, winter severity seems to play a role in determining foraging strategies. Large-scale reviews of food habits should be based on several measures of diet composition, with special attention to those methods reflecting the energetic value of food.

Subfields: Ecological Modeling, Ecology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/505501c64b0d2c79a8f23d6b1bd679e0b6e7f28c

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Citations in the corpus

Food habits of the world's grey wolves (2016, result): “First, our sample size was large (n = 177 studies) in comparison to that of similar dietary reviews (e.g. Bojarska & Selva 2012).”
Fast food bears: brown bear diet in a human-dominated landscape with intensive supplemental feeding (2015, background): “Brown bears Ursus arctos are typical opportunistic omnivores that feed on a variety of food sources, including anthropogenic foods (Bojarska and Selva 2012).”
Berry production drives bottom – up effects on body mass and reproductive success in an omnivore (2018, background): “Omnivores have a simple digestive system and often rely on easily digestible and highly nutritious fruiting bodies, like berries or nuts, during limited time periods (Smith and Follmer 1972, Bojarska and Selva 2012).”
Seasonal and annual variation in the diet of brown bears Ursus arctos in the boreal forest of southcentral Sweden (2016, background): “!e dietary habits of brown bears have been described for many populations in Europe and North America (Bojarska and Selva 2012).”