The importance of capturing wild animals for research and conservation projects is widely shared. As this activity continues to become more common, the need to assess its negative effects increases so as to ensure ethical standards and the validity of research results. Increasing evidence has revealed that indirect (physiological and behavioural) effects of capture are as important as direct risks (death or injury) and that different capture methodologies can cause heterogeneous effects. We investigated the influence of chemical immobilisation on Alpine ibex (Capra ibex): during the days following the capture we collected data on spatial behaviour, activity levels of both males and females, and male hormone levels. Moreover, we recorded the reproductive status of each marked female during the breeding seasons of 15 years. Then, by several a priori models we investigated the effects of the capture taking into account biological factors and changes in environmental conditions. Our results showed that chemical immobilisation did not affect either spatial behaviour (for both males and females) or male hormone levels, though both sexes showed reduced activity levels up to two days after the capture. The capture did not significantly affect the likelihood for a female to give birth in the following summer. Our findings highlighted the scarce impact of chemical immobilisation on ibex biology, as we detected alteration of activity levels only immediately after the capture if compared to the following days (i.e., baseline situation). Hence, the comparison of our findings with previous research showed that our methodology is one of the less invasive procedures to capture large mammals. Nonetheless, in areas characterised by high predator density, we suggest that animals released be carefully monitored for some hours after the capture. Moreover, researchers should avoid considering data collected during the first days after the manipulation in order to avoid biased information.

Predators may influence their prey populations not only through direct lethal effects, but also by causing behavioural changes. The natural expansion of the wolf (Canis lupus) into the Alps provided the rare opportunity to monitor the responses of a prey species to the return of a large predator. Density effects have rarely been considered in the study of antipredator strategies. We examined the effects of wolf recolonisation and density modifications on group size and use of safe areas by Alpine ibex (Capra ibex) in Gran Paradiso National Park (Italy), where no large terrestrial predator has been present for about a century. We documented that, in a few years, the variation in the factors affecting the landscape of fear caused significant modifications in ibex behavioural patterns that could not be accounted for by density changes only. Male groups decreased in size and moved closer to safer areas. The distance of female groups from refuge sites, instead, was not affected, and their propensity to live in groups was scarcely modified. Behavioural modifications likely caused a reduction in nutrient intake in adult male ibex, as they necessarily used lower‐quality feeding patches. Our results showed that male and female ibex, which are characterised by a strong dimorphism, adopted different strategies to solve the conflicting demands of foraging efficiently and avoiding predators.

The fine-scale genetic structure of mammal populations arises from the social and spatial behaviour of individuals. In wild ungulates gene flow is usually mediated by males, being the dispersing sex. The roe deer Capreolus capreolus represents an exception: males and females disperse in similar proportions as juveniles, but are subsequently mostly sedentary as adults, while mechanisms for inbreeding avoidance are more complex and not fully known. We investigated the seasonal variation in the relationship between genetic relatedness and spatial behaviour in a sample of 69 roe deer, monitored from 2002 to 2010 in a high-density population in Italy. Genetic and spatial analyses, based on individual positions, did not reveal any population structure, neither in the whole sample, nor in the two sexes separately. Our results are coherent with the absence of a sex bias in roe deer dispersal and suggest the existence of a high gene flow across a continuous forest habitat, thus preventing the onset of population structuring at a local scale. We found that genetic relatedness tended to increase with home range proximity, but mostly in winter. Nevertheless, when the extent of overlap between seasonal home ranges with respect to genetic relatedness was considered, males and females seemed to preferably share their home range with relatives of the same sex, reducing the overlap with relatives of the opposite sex during the rutting period. We conclude that home range rearrangements during the breeding season may afford a certain level of spatial segregation between closely related potential mates, thus reducing inbreeding risk.